


Curiosity made the Cat

by Gem_Gem



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Animal Traits, Animal Transformation (sort of), Bathing/Washing, Big Brother Mycroft, Buried "Alive", Cat Ears, Cat Sherlock, Cat Tail, Cat anatomy, Cat knowledge, Cat/Human Hybrids, Catlock, Dark Sherlock, Doctor John, Fur, Little bit of angst, M/M, Memory Loss, Mutation, Mycroft To The Rescue, Naked Sherlock, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Possessive Sherlock, Protective John, Protective Mycroft, Purring, Scent Marking, Scenting, Sherlock Being an Idiot, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Sherlock Is Not Okay, Sherlock dies very very briefly, Sherlock is a Mess, Suspicious John, WIP, catnip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-16 21:26:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5841583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gem_Gem/pseuds/Gem_Gem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People often described Sherlock as feline...pretty ironic once he woke up to find a couple of cat ears on his head and a tail protruding from his lower back...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Front Cover

**Author's Note:**

> I was watching youtube videos. One of my favourite Let's Players started a Graphic novel "game". An anime Graphic novel "game", about catgirls - And so this idea was born!
> 
> It's not the first time that such an idea has come about. Catlock is out there. However, this might be different. In my story, Sherlock doesn't start off as half cat, but instead gets turned into one.  
> Sure, it might sound clichéd and a little funny (and it's possible someone has already done it)...but I like it nonetheless. What I want to know is if you lovelies like it. If I have a lot of interest in it, then I will be more inclined to invest my time in it.
> 
> And before you comment asking after other stories, don't worry darlings, I shan't give up the others that I need to finish (in fact I am constantly trying to finish them daily) - The only problem is writer's block. Creative writing isn't as easy as some people might think and sometimes it takes days to get a story/chapter written because the creativity (and my Muse) just isn't there, and I cannot force myself to write. Think about how long it takes proper writers/authors to finish their books and novels! It can take them years.
> 
> Love you all <3


	2. Prologue

Sherlock slipped in through the door once it softly clicked open and squinted through the darkness as he took careful and quiet steps through the empty but dusty corridor. It was off-white in colour with cracks in the walls either side of him, which crawled over the surface with jagged and reaching, dark fingered fissures, breaking the seam between wall and ceiling dangerously. The air was thick and tinged with the smell of antiseptic and a combination of bitter unfamiliar scents that left an odd and displeasing aftertaste in Sherlock’s mouth, and he frowned and paused for a moment, taking heed of the footprints in the dust. Three sets of them. Two male. One female. Crouching slowly, Sherlock touched a hand to the marks of wheels either side of the prints and followed them off into the distance with his eyes, noticing faint scratches along the walls. Searching his mind Sherlock brought up an image of a metal trolley and placed it on the floor to match it, sifting through many different types until he noticed a dusting of fur lining the corners of the corridor and shifted his attention to it instead. The mound of fur was a range of different sorts all tangled together and murky and clumped with dust, and he straightened and walked onward until he heard the distinct and distant calls of animals. The sound was muted but just about tangible, and Sherlock tilted his head to better detect it, closing his eyes.

“Dogs, cats, possibly rats…” Sherlock whispered as he singled out each sound, frowning deeply when he had to strain to hear more. He huffed and opened his eyes, following the muffled noises to a thick metal door at the end of the winding corridor with a numbered code panel affixed to the right side, and leaned close to run his gaze over it as he turned his head to hear more of the animals stuck behind. The sounds were mostly from yowling cats and Sherlock blinked, looking aside as he searched his mind again for more information.

The place he was in was possibly some secret animal-testing clinic of some kind and Sherlock rolled his head with significance as he recalled that cats were mostly used for neurological research in scientific exploration, dealing with the anatomy, functions, and organic syndromes of nerves and the nervous system. Whereas dogs were more commonly used for biomedical research, testing and education.

He tilted his head and inspected the code panel again, focusing on each and every button. It had been wiped clean of any fingerprints or smudges, the panel gleaming and fresh in an otherwise crumbling and dusty building. Sherlock ran his fingers down and along the seams of the door and then stepped back with a quiet sigh, looking around for any sort of clue as to the passcode. As he thought and searched around him for something to aid his efforts, the sounds of the animals penetrated his thoughts; especially those of the cats, and he glanced suddenly back at the door with a quirk to his mouth.

“Like cats do you?” He murmured lowly and pulled out his mobile, swiping the screen. “The most notable, of course, are the Egyptians…” 

Sherlock glanced up at the thought, cocked his head, and ran through everything he knew about ancient Egyptians as rapidly as he could. He skimmed information about how they had thought cats to be sacred animals, looked through the engraved illustrations showing such things, and then flicked through all of their gods and goddesses in a fluid flick of his hand. He paused on one, enlarging the depiction of a woman with the head of a cat wearing a gold earring, and stared at it with a thoughtful and considering expression. Flicking his eyes at the goddesses name he bit down on his lip and dragged it aside with his fingers.

“Bastet,” Sherlock muttered aloud. “Bastet. Or is it Bast? Baast, Ubast, Baset—God this is tedious – It can’t be any of those anyway, right? Because it’s a number code…well, not necessarily…numerology is always useful for things like this. The question is; how have they done it? Too complicated and even they won’t be able to remember it. Obviously.” Sherlock rocked on his heels and smiled slowly. “So, if it’s not complicated, then it must be quite simple. — Pythagorean Numerology then.”

He stepped close to the door, lifted his right hand to extend his index finger after a slight hesitation, and gave one quick and inspecting look around the door, looking for any sort of alarm system, before he brought up the goddesses name, skimmed the relevant information regarding it again, and took a deep breath as he softly typed in the passcode.

“Two, one, one, two, five, two,” Sherlock whispered. “Smart yet simple. I like it. Things can be so brilliant in their simplicity.”

The panel beeped positively, flashing brightly blue and green, as the door juddered with movement and unlocked with a vibrating sound that thrummed up from Sherlock’s feet. It swung outwards leisurely with a low, lingering hiss and Sherlock stepped aside, calculating the thickness of the door as it opened with a lift of his eyebrows. Air blew against Sherlock’s face as he peered into the room behind it and he blinked at the onslaught of scents, finding the musk of animals and strong, sharp tang of medical anodyne overwhelmingly powerful. The room was dark and filled with the deafening echoing calls of the animals evidently packed inside, but as Sherlock took a tentative step inside with a narrowed gaze, lights dangling from the long stretch of the high ceiling above him bloomed abruptly on with an almost blinding flash, exposing the entirety of the room with a series of bright throbs. The animals within fell into an even louder hysteria at the change and Sherlock flinched back as he looked around with wide eyes.

The room was exceedingly vast, and filled with cages of various sizes stacked on top of one another and huddled in groups, lining the walls either side of Sherlock and housing several breeds of dog, a few dozen rats and mice, some rabbits, and every breed of cat that Sherlock had ever seen, domestic and otherwise. Some cages were thicker than others, filled with wildcats, two cougars, one cheetah, three jaguars, four lion cubs, one tiger, and odd mutated looking cats that stared eerily at Sherlock as he moved deeper into the area. Near the end of the room was another door, this one made of thick plastic, with yet another number panel on the right side. It lead into a small walkway with what looked like a rack of scrubs and an air shower, and beyond that was what Sherlock could only assume to be a clean room. Sherlock wandered over to the door, peering through to it as much as he could, curious and impressed. 

The laboratory-like room on the other side was dark, hiding what lay within with a mask of shadows and unfamiliar veiled shapes, and with a sigh Sherlock regarded the other code panel briefly with an intrigued purse of his mouth, before he turned to survey the animal filled room again with a wince. Using his phone he snapped photos of the place, walking up to the cages to inspect the extraordinarily coded tags and descriptions stuck to the top of each one. Most of the animals, except for the bigger ones that Sherlock kept well clear of, backed away from him as he moved close to examine them and take photos, scared and growling at his looming figure. A few domestic cats, however, weren’t phased by him at all, and as Sherlock went by a line of them, one such cat stepped forward, a dark brown cat with bright green eyes and large attentive ears. It let out a soft meow that was all but swallowed by the noise from the rest of the room, and Sherlock slowly stopped to face it, eyeing the tag above it’s cage fleetingly.

The cat stared up at him unblinkingly and then rubbed along the bars affectionately till Sherlock gave in with a roll of his eyes and reached through to stroke the cat’s neck, petted between it’s perked ears and then caressed along the cat’s back. Squatting down he peered at the cat closely and checked it’s overall health, pocketing his phone to use both of his hands with a small smile, rubbing the cat’s body with one hand and tilting the cat’s head with his other, pulling open the cat’s mouth to check it’s teeth. Just as he let the cat’s head go and looked toward it’s tail when he stroked up along it and scratched gently at the base of the cat’s spine, the cat shook it’s head and splashed drool into Sherlock’s face with a thrumming trill, spraying some in Sherlock’s eye. 

Jerking back with a curse Sherlock straightened up and rubbed at his face, wiping the saliva from his cheek and scrubbing the heel of his palm into his eyes. Blinking rapidly with a grimace and a glare in the cat’s direction, Sherlock fixed his collar, and watched as the cat yawned in reply, unapologetic and unbothered, licking it’s jaws and then butting the bars with it’s head friendlily. Sherlock rolled his eyes again with a sigh and reached back in to stroke under it’s chin, unable to resist the sociable invitation. It’s fur was soft and after another few caresses from Sherlock’s fingertips he noticed that there was a faint scattering of loose fur and it was sticking to his coat sleeve and clinging to the creases of his fingers. 

“Not been groomed for a while, hm?” Sherlock murmured to it under his breath, and brushed his fingers down the cat’s body to rid it of the thin dusting layer of cat hair with an open smile. 

As he did so, he glanced idly around the room, spotting a large, glass door cabinet nearby full of strange looking vials with coded labels, and so craned his neck to look inside with an inquisitive narrowing of his eyes. Like everything else inside the room, including the outside of the cages, it was spotless and even faintly gleaming, the sliding glass doors so sparkling clean that they reflected the room vividly, like a mirror. In it Sherlock could see the open door behind him and frowned, looking over his shoulder at it and wondering if he had left it as widely open as it was currently. He stared at the door for another moment or two and then looked back at the cabinet, bending to try and see through the reflections and in at the objects inside.

The cat licked one of his fingers, drawing his attention back, and Sherlock softly thumbed it’s ear before he left it alone in order to have a closer look at the cabinet, entirely absorbed by it. Some still packaged syringes were clumped haphazardly on the bottom shelf, beside a box of latex gloves and bottles and bottles of chloroform, sedatives, anaesthetics, and other such tranquillisers. There were five shelves, and on the four others sat vials and vials of strange looking liquids, all of them with coded labels. Coded with both words and colours. Without context, Sherlock was not able to decipher what they meant and scowled, glancing at the silver lock that opened the cabinet with an interested expression and reaching to touch it. At the pressure of his inspection, the glass door slid open easily and Sherlock opened it with a slowly furrowing brow, confused as to why it was open when everything else was so securely locked and wrapped in mystery.

As he reached in and picked up one vial, one that conveniently had the same sort of code on the label as the tag of the friendly brown cat, he perceived that in the curved glass of the vial something, or rather someone, was reflected within it as they stepped up behind him deliberately in a distorted and daunting growing shadow that made him freeze in alarm. The dark reflection of the person lifted a poised arm, preparing to strike, and the overhead lights outlined and glinted off the familiar spike of a needle. Sherlock turned just as the syringe was embedded into his neck; the plunger promptly pressed as the unknown assailant shoved Sherlock up against the cabinet angrily, wearing what looked like a dark hooded coat to mask their identity in the harsh glare of the room. A gush of cold bloomed where the needle was implanted, spreading out like cold, dead fingers throughout his throat, winding and crawling down to his instantly heaving chest. Sherlock blinked widely in panic, struggling to free himself with such frantic strength that he knocked the person back several feet until they tripped backward, knocking their head back on the way down. 

Sherlock fell toward the floor clumsily grasping at the syringe as he tried to look at whom they were, and dropped painfully to his knees, tipping forward with a shaky breath as the room span in a disorienting tilt once the drug took quick affect. The vial he had picked up was still clutched in his hand and it smashed under his weight when he brought both hands up to impulsively brace himself, slicing his palm and splashing the contents up into his face. The liquid invaded his mouth and eyes before he had a chance to shield himself from it, and it burned as it coated his tongue and blurred his vision, stinging and scouring his eyes and throat so excruciatingly that the pain took him over almost completely, making his heart lurch and stutter. It was the worst pain that Sherlock could ever remember experiencing and it exploded in his head in an unrelenting ripple, erasing any and all thought.

The racket of the animals around him increased in volume as he gave a hitched and gurgling scream, clawing at his own face, and the sound was ear-piercing and agonising, adding to the throbbing pain in his head. He flailed, panic-stricken and lost in his crashing suffering, and began convulsing when he suddenly choked on his own tongue, foaming from the mouth and arching in an uncontrollable seizure that had his eyes rolling up. His vision cleared partly as he shook with a strangled moan, all his muscles taut and burning, and he stared widely up at the cages from his awkward position on the floor, his focus throbbing but fixed on the green eyes of the brown cat. The cat stared at him, butting the bars with an unheard meow and stretching it’s back, pupils constricting and dilating in a periodic, mesmerising flow. Sherlock shuddered violently as he began to lose consciousness, unable to stop the darkness creeping along his sight and the slow muting of all sound. He fought to flex his fingers and reach for his phone but it was all in vain, and he whimpered highly with a moist, crackling voice.

The person who’d stabbed him with the syringe abruptly appeared beside him, stepped close, and kicked him over onto his back, holding him down with a black high-heeled boot to his sternum until he finally stopped seizing and lay still, his heart shuddering roughly for a few more painful beats before the darkness overtook the entirety of his vision and he let out a long, quivering exhale with the last few aching beats of his heart.


	3. Digitigrade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking about adding illustrations to the story, please let me know your feedback on that.  
> Hopefully I describe things well enough not to need assistance from drawings, but at the same time I'm tempted to show you all just what Sherlock looks like at certain times anyway.

At the first series of scratching thumps on the front door John was anxious and instantly suspicious, and he sneaked up toward the window to peer out at the street below, craning his neck to search the front step of 221B to find a filthy bundle of tattered and torn blankets wrapped around a dazed and deathly pale Sherlock. The blankets looked to be a cluster of filthy, tatty curtains, bedclothes and rugs that looked to have been dumped in the rubbish, trodden on and covered in a mass of indescribable grime, and Sherlock looked no better with his face smudged and streaked with dirt with a light layer of moisture from the scattering of fine rain that had descended over London sometime during the afternoon. John’s breath left him in a rush at the sight and he stumbled with his heart in his throat as he rushed down the stairs and unlocked and threw open the door. He expected it to be a phantom, to be his mind playing tricks, or even for it to be a dream. After so long of hearing nothing from Sherlock, of having Mycroft find Sherlock’s broken and discarded phone with it’s SIM removed, and with seeing the last known footage of Sherlock walking through the outskirts of London before he had disappeared without a trace, John had almost given up hope that he’d ever see his flatmate again. At first, Mycroft had been inclined to think that Sherlock was merely being Sherlock, but after searching all the boltholes that Sherlock had been known to frequent and coming up empty handed each and every time, Mycroft had then taken to scanning through endless CCTV footage to find his brother only to withdraw in silence with a grim promise that they’d find him and nothing more.

Sherlock glanced up at John from his slumped position on the floor and it was only when he struggled upright and into John’s awaiting hands that John realised Sherlock was standing awkwardly on a pair of furry clawed feet. Looking up into Sherlock’s pallid and muddy face, John frowned and cupped his neck, checking his pulse as two dark brown, and moderately large, feline-like ears perked up from where they’d been pressed atop Sherlock’s head, hidden amongst his dirt-slicked curls, and swivelled toward John attentively. Sherlock’s fingers, when he reached to grasp hold of John’s jumper, were claw-tipped and trembling, each nail long, white and sharply curled. At first John’s mind refused to fully register the sight, all his attention focused on the rapid heartbeat against his fingertips and the fact of Sherlock being back, of finally being able to see his face again, hear his breath, and feel the thrum of life under his hand. Nevertheless, after checking that Sherlock was indeed in front of him, John glanced back up at the ears and down at the feet, and took in Sherlock’s bewildered, fatigued and malnourished features.

“What…” John breathed in confusion and growing terror, trailing off into silence as Sherlock lifted his eyes to look at him, eyes that had extended irises and largely dilated pupils. “What happened to you?”

Sherlock blinked at him slowly, looking very nearly delirious, and then collapsed in a heavy heap against John’s chest, the filthy sheets around his body slipping enough to expose his naked shoulder and torso. John fumbled to keep him up and then grunted as he pulled Sherlock in and laid him out on the hallway floor while he looked around outside, shut the door, locked it and stared at it for a moment as he tried to get a handle on the situation. Slowly, with great trepidation, John turned to regard the stretched out body near the stairs and took several deep and shaking breaths. With Sherlock unconscious, John felt freer to look him over and so stooped down and bent over his body to push back the sheets to uncover Sherlock’s legs. They looked like an oversized copy of the hind legs you would see on a cat or dog, and John sat back quickly, pressing his lips together in shock. Dark, brown fur covered the animal paws that had replaced Sherlock’s human feet, tapering off several inches up the human part of Sherlock’s shin and calf like some kind of fur sock. John gaped at the extended heel and the clawed toes, and reached instinctively and curiously over to run his fingers up the appendage to gauge if it was indeed real or just a figment of his wild and feverish imagination. The lingering thought that everything could all still turn out a dream was pressing at the back of his eyes even after the realistic sensation of Sherlock’s heated body under each and every swipe of his hand.

Sherlock stirred at the touch and suddenly purred so loudly and so deeply, that he jerked himself more conscious and blinked blearily at the floor with a twitch of his nose, “Can you…get up?” John asked him gently, jumping when Sherlock’s new ears swivelled in his direction with a twitch. “We need to get…get you up into the flat, okay? Can you do that?”

At the display of his own monstrous legs, Sherlock curled in on himself, and for the first time, John noticed that he also had a tail, “I don’t remember,” he whispered into the floor, and his ears drooped, flattening to his head. “I don’t remember anything from before the box.”

“The box?” John repeated with a sudden and worried frown, leaning back over him and detecting a glimpse of sharp teeth behind Sherlock’s shapely lips. “What do you mean, Sherlock? What box?”

“The box in the ground,” Sherlock replied with a shaky exhale as he drew his knees up to his chest. His eyes seemed to glaze over for a worrying minute and then Sherlock bolted upright, clutching the foul layers of fabric to his obviously nude body beneath. “Something happened to me. Look at me. Just…look at me, John. What am I? How is this possible? Who did this? I…I don’t understand—It’s irrational! It makes no sense. I…I can’t…I can’t, John! I can’t remember anything! Me!”

Gathering Sherlock up quickly, John heaved him to his feet, steadying him with a strong grasp of both arms, “It’s…it’s okay, Sherlock. Come on; let’s just go up stairs, all right? One step at a time. That’s it. I’ve got you,” John soothed as Sherlock clung to him and fumbled up the seventeen steps clumsily. He still seemed to be on the brink of some sort of mental breakdown, and so John kept a very tight and secure grasp on him, keeping him grounded and bringing Sherlock’s slipping focus back again and again.

As they shuffled through to the kitchen and then into Sherlock’s bedroom, Sherlock seemed to relax by an incredible amount, his shoulders slumping and his face slackening. He seemed to be inhaling the air around them through both his nose and his parted mouth, and John watched him for a second before he turned him and lifted him onto the bed. Sherlock pushed his face into the pillow instantly, clutching at his own bed sheets and burying himself in the familiar mattress with a strong eagerness that pulled at John’s heart. Standing back guarded and muddled at the spectacle in front of him, John licked his lips anxiously and watched as Sherlock curled up on his side with his back to John, his ears twitching from perked to flattening backwards and rotating, and then as he began to knead the pillow and bed with a flexing and prickling of his clawed hands. 

John regarded him thoughtfully and stepped gingerly closer to the side of the bed, still horrendously perplexed and stunned by the sight of Sherlock looking so familiar but so strange, and gazed at the grimy material still twisted loosely around Sherlock’s body, “I’m going to…look you over, all right? Take away these horrible layers,” John whispered and waited until Sherlock nodded with half-closed eyes and a full-body stretch of relief before he, himself, nodded and braced himself for the task at hand. He tugged the blankets away from Sherlock slowly and gently, uncovering his naked body bit by bit and keeping a warm, reassuring hand on Sherlock’s shoulder to keep him on his side with his back to John for Sherlock’s privacy and some sense of decency. 

When Sherlock was completely uncovered John stepped back, threw the bundle of putrid material to one side, and looked over the expanse of Sherlock’s muddy and bruised skin, and tracked his incredulous eyes over the trail of fur that ran in a thin line from the nape of Sherlock’s neck, down his spine, to where a long tail extended, cushioned against Sherlock’s buttocks. The tail was relaxed and still and very slightly curled at the tip, and almost without any thought at all, John touched it and let it press with a tremor up against his palm. The tail was almost as long as Sherlock’s curved and flexible spine, the fur soft and short under his fingertips and nails, and John followed it from the tip to the base, pushing his fingers up Sherlock’s back and into his hair to feel around Sherlock’s trembling but relaxed ears. The fur also covered the whole of Sherlock’s scalp amongst his curls, keeping within his hairline, and made his hair seem thicker and suppler to the touch. John carded his fingers through it and parted Sherlock’s ringlets at the base of his head to examine the dark fur with a sweep of his thumb to see Sherlock’s skin beneath, checking how the ears were attached with a loop of unnerve in his stomach. 

Sherlock purred gently again, the sound otherworldly but undeniable in its rumbling vibration, “M’sorry,” Sherlock slurred sleepily with heavy-lidded eyes and a deliberate and calm blink. 

“It’s okay,” John replied quietly and continued his tender inspection of Sherlock’s ears, catching sight of how the clawed-nails of Sherlock’s hands were retracting steadily from the corner of his eyes. “It’s a good thing. Or that’s what I’ve been lead to believe…” John shot Sherlock a tight, light-hearted smile and then looked down at Sherlock’s clawed feet, seeing the pink paw pads underneath one of them as it tilted and stretched.

Abruptly and unhealthily fascinated by it, John moved to the end of the bed and drifted his hands along one of Sherlock’s legs, and then the other, feeling out the bones and muscles beneath skin and fur alike. The claws at Sherlock’s new feet seemed to be just as retractable as the ones on his fingers, and John took a moment to gently extend them by carefully pressing the top and bottom of the pawed foot. Sherlock purred once more, quietly, on one long exhale as the sharp, curled claws protracted, and John glanced up the stretch of Sherlock’s body to stroke over Sherlock’s human knee comfortingly with his other hand when Sherlock opened his eyes further to look down at him without moving from his lethargically languid position. The entire thing was fantastically dreamlike, the inhuman limbs under John’s hand almost like something from a fantasy book or a monster movie. John thought suddenly of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and stroked one hand up Sherlock’s hip and side as he walked to the head of the bed again, reaching to turn Sherlock’s chin toward him.

“Just going to check your eyes,” he explained in a low mumble and pulled back Sherlock’s eyelids to look at the largely dilated pupils and have Sherlock track the movement of his index finger clinically. Turning on the bedside lamp, John used it to check his pupil responses and then watched as they widened gradually once more after he was finished, Sherlock’s focus fixed on John’s face. “Okay…now your teeth. Open your mouth for me?”

Sherlock lazily did as he was told and closed his eyes when John pushed up his upper lip to expose two long canine teeth. Both the lower and upper sets of canines were longer and sharper than a normal human canine was meant to be, but the upper ones were the most drastically changed, and John leaned close to eye the length with a hard swallow. Upon opening Sherlock’s mouth a little wider, John noticed that the premolars and first molars were also a lot sharper than normal, serrated and ragged and shaped perfectly to shear and tear up food, more significantly meat. The sight of Sherlock’s dangerous mouth made John automatically cautious and he backed up to check Sherlock’s jaw and throat, amazed at how much stronger Sherlock’s jaw felt under his fingers.

Picking up the nearest of Sherlock’s hands, John turned it over to look at the palm and rubbed the creases there, fingering a patch of light pink skin at the top of the palm, a colour that differed from the surrounding skin so much that John first wondered if Sherlock had damaged his hand in some way, before he realised that it was like the pads on his feet, only of a lesser degree. The patches of pink skin were even up the underside of each finger and faintly puffy, thicker than the rest of the skin of his palm and softly textured. John stroked and pressed at each finger in turn, and then inspected his claw-like nails, caressing the skin where they were lightly sheathed and carefully pushing to extend them with awe. Sherlock remained passive and uninterested during the procedure, inanely content to allow John to map and inspect whatever part of him needed, his limbs limp and scrutiny withdrawn. John glanced into Sherlock’s face and pondered for the short length of time that they stared at each other if Sherlock had done the same exact things to his own body as John was doing, and tried to imagine with a cringe what his reactions had been after finding such mutated additions on his body that he had no memory of. 

“Right,” John sighed, sweeping his hand quickly and idly over Sherlock’s chest as he gathered his courage and stifled a grimace, reigning in all the professionalism that he could as he looked into Sherlock’s opening eyes, “I should look at the rest of you. Can you turn onto your back so I can check your torso, stomach and…genitals, please?”

With only a brief reluctance, Sherlock shifted around as requested and exposed his flaccid penis to John with a steady breath and a languorous stretch of his legs, coiling his tail around his right thigh. Running both hands down over Sherlock’s worryingly prominent ribs and thin but lean stomach, John looked at the small stripe of hair leading from the underside of Sherlock’s navel in a held breath and followed it down to the neat curls above his penis before looking at the penis itself. Sherlock wasn’t circumcised and so his foreskin was slightly protecting and hiding the head of his penis in a fold of pale skin. Dithering for the inevitable by checking the protruding and smooth bones of Sherlock’s hips and pelvis with a few soft, concerned and searching presses, John tried to examine Sherlock’s crotch by sight alone.

“Have you noticed anything…different here?” John asked as he hovered over him, not wanting to touch his friend in such an intimate place if he didn’t need to.

“Haven’t looked,” Sherlock breathed with a loose shrug and turned his head aside to nuzzle against his pillow and possibly ignore where John was about to assess. 

John nodded and took a deep, stalling breath, “Right,” he said again and reached over to pick the shaft of Sherlock’s penis up tenderly, shocked at how soft Sherlock’s pubic hair was against his knuckles as he adjusted his hold on Sherlock’s flaccid penis and felt up its length proficiently. John frowned as he fingered at a few lumps and nodules and ridges along the way, and then carefully pressed Sherlock’s foreskin back to peer at the uncovered head with a look of sudden concentration when he saw a band of raised bumps that circled the base of Sherlock’s glans. “Sherlock? Have you always had these pearly penile papules?”

Sherlock lifted his head enough to glance down and then looked away with a flattening of his ears, his tail slipping between his legs, “No.”

“It’s okay,” John soothed and awkwardly patted Sherlock’s leg with his free hand, distantly aware of Sherlock’s warm temperature, and quickly checked Sherlock’s scrotum before stepping away, making a mental note to try and research the lumps up his friend’s shaft. Although, with Sherlock being the way he was, John knew that whatever conclusion he came to, might not even be the correct one. “They aren’t harmful or anything. It’s fine. You’re… fine. Just fine – You can turn back onto your side now if you want—” 

The sound of the front door opening and closing, and the following precise but quick footsteps up the stairs coupled with the familiar tap of an umbrella, had John rushing quickly from the room to meet Mycroft halfway in an instant. John held his hands out and shook his head with what he hoped was the most genuinely stern expression on his face that he could muster. Mycroft slowed at the look with a tilt of his head but didn’t stop and so John turned back to shut Sherlock’s bedroom door briskly to make his point. Mycroft’s face was blank for a moment as he came to a halt a few inches from John and loomed with confusion, lifting his gaze to Sherlock’s door with a flicker of something John would label concern if it weren’t for the arching, arrogant eyebrow that followed. He had ignored and stayed away from John and the flat for longer than John had appreciated, and although John had gone to Lestrade for extra help, John knew that if anyone could find Sherlock, it was his brother, Mycroft. Mycroft had eyes everywhere, and had his fingers in so many pies that John was wondering if Sherlock’s jabs at his diet had a whole different meaning altogether. 

“I think you should sit down,” John told him earnestly. “There’s…something I need to tell you about, Sherlock. Something I…hardly believe myself but it’s…it’s real.” 

“I’d rather stand,” Mycroft intoned with a narrowed look over John’s body, his jaw jutting out before he smiled tightly but graciously. “My brother is here, is he not?”

John took a sharp annoyed breath, “Yeah, but he—”

“Then I wish to see him,” Mycroft interjected and lifted an elegant, poised, well manicured hand to cut John off even before he began opening his mouth. “Whatever it is, I’m sure I would understand better if I were to see it with my own eyes, Doctor Watson.”

The tone in which Mycroft uttered his name made John’s eye twitch and his jaw clench in anger, however he suppressed the sudden need to shout in building resentment and stared up into Mycroft’s face, into his eyes, and then sighed in defeat, “Fine – But be…open-minded,” John muttered with a frustrated and disbelieving shake of his head, opening the door to wave Mycroft through irritably. “Don’t question him either. Not now. Not when he’s just found his way back. Let him recuperate a little. – Doctors orders.”

Giving John a brief nod of acceptance and ignoring the sarcastic bite to John’s voice, Mycroft strolled through and stuttered to a stop a few feet from the bed, his umbrella hitting the floor with a dull thud. John entered again slowly and glanced over at Sherlock, whom had turned onto his side again and curled up into a ball, his tail between his legs and his ears flat and rotated backwards against his head. Mycroft’s eyes jumped and flitted uncontrollably all over Sherlock’s body as he tried to process what it was he was seeing and how it possibly could be real, and John bowed his head in understanding, folding his hands behind his back as he waited. The scent of earth, humidity and the musky, piquant, heavy scent of Sherlock filled the room as the seconds ticked by, and John crooked his head as he inhaled slowly, noting that the natural scent of Sherlock wasn’t exactly different, but it was denser, stronger, and it shot an odd prickle down the back of John’s neck that made him frown, overly wary. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell; in fact, John had smelt it before, though in a lighter amount, whenever Sherlock would walk by him after just waking up, smelling of sleep and his natural musk.

“What happened?” Mycroft asked emotionlessly after a tense and cold sort of silence had settled on the room, clogging and thick in its strangeness. 

“I don’t know,” John replied and rubbed his mouth, scratched at his scalp, and then shut the door behind him for something to do, “he just turned up on the doorstep like that and I—”

Mycroft walked forward, rounding the bed and leaned down at the waist sophisticatedly to peer into Sherlock’s face, “I wasn’t talking to you,” he snapped curtly at John without acknowledging him in any other way. “Sherlock? What happened to you? Who did this?”

“Look, I told you not to question him,” John angrily replied, fisting his hands at his sides when Mycroft barely spared him a glance. “Mycroft. Mycroft, leave it. Leave him alone.”

“What happened, Sherlock?” Mycroft repeated relentlessly.

John stepped close to the opposite side of Sherlock’s bed and couldn’t help but snarl as he bent over, “Mycroft. If you do not shut up right this minute, I’ll be forced to make you and then escort you, very forcibly, out of the flat.”

Mycroft finally lifted his gaze to John and began to straighten up just before Sherlock raised his head and spoke, “I don’t know what happened,” he croaked and opened his eyes to look up at Mycroft completely. “I don’t remember. Memory loss.”

“How much memory loss?” Mycroft enquired, and John glared at him fiercely and he leaned back, folding his arms. “How far back do you remember?”

“Leaving the flat,” Sherlock droned lowly without looking away from Mycroft.

Mycroft frowned gently in reprimand and cocked his head to one side, “Why did you leave the flat? For what purpose?”

“I had business with my homeless network.” Sherlock told him with a dismissive air and his ears lifted, turning toward Mycroft neutrally. “I met with them. Got what I wanted and then…noticed something…an abandoned building.”

“What kind of building?” Mycroft asked softly with another frown, leaning on his umbrella with attention. “Describe it to me. Where was it?”

“It was—” Sherlock began before his eyes glazed over and he stared into the middle distance with an erratic twitch of his ears, unmoving for three seconds of silence. He then unexpectedly screamed, shuddering and shouting incoherently as he clutched and clawed at his own face with lengthening claws. 

John and Mycroft both lounged forward and grabbed his wrists to stop him, holding on as Sherlock fought them and arched his head back, straining his neck and screaming again so piercingly that the veins and tendons in his throat bulged and his entire face flushed red. John grunted as he kneeled on the bed to wrestle with him harder and Sherlock cried out and yelled, eyes wide and unfocused and staring whilst they rolled up into his head. Calling Sherlock’s name repeatedly, John pinned him on his back to the bed with all his strength and quietly grunted as Sherlock’s sharp clawed feet raked up his back, damaging the seams of his jumper just when Sherlock began to suddenly growl and yowl like a distressed animal, filling the room with deafeningly horrific, inhuman sounds that both scared and upset John and Mycroft in equal quantities. Sherlock was almost crazy with panic, his tail stiff and shaking with its fur standing on end, his ears back and flat against his head, and his sharp teeth exposed.

“It’s okay, Sherlock. Sherlock, calm down.” John soothed as much as he could, making a few shushing noises and keeping his tone low and pacifying, whilst he kept Sherlock from harming himself further. He pressed closer to Sherlock when Sherlock tried to bring his knees up to kick John away and shook his head. “No, no, no. It’s me, Sherlock. Sherlock, listen to my voice. Listen to me. Calm down, do you hear? Calm down. Everything is all right. You’re safe.”

“What can I do?” Mycroft unexpectedly asked with a lost expression on his face and a flitting of wide eyes.

John panted and grunted, struggling with Sherlock’s arms and looked around quickly in thought, nodding jerkily toward Sherlock’s head, “Stroke him.”

“…What?” Mycroft frowned in confusion.

“He’s part bloody animal. A cat,” John said through his teeth, trying to be heard over Sherlock’s brawling but also trying to be low enough to calm him. “Stroke him. Pet him – Did you not own any sort of animal in your childhood? A dog, a cat, a Goddamn hamster? Stroke his bloody head!”

Mycroft blinked rapidly at John and then reached over, hesitant and slow, sliding his fingers through Sherlock’s hair to cup and steady his head, smoothing his thumb and fingertips over Sherlock’s scalp. John saw the moment Mycroft realised that Sherlock had fur there and nodded with a quiet sigh at Mycroft’s curious look, glancing down as Sherlock suddenly froze with a hitching breath at his brother’s touch, his mouth parted and his eyes closed while Mycroft ran fingers through his dirty curls and then lightly up his ears until they trembled. Mycroft, seemingly entranced and interested in the event taking place, leaned further forward over the bed and stroked his index finger down the line of Sherlock’s nose. The motion looked practiced and reminiscent, and Mycroft’s tight mouth softened around the edges and quirked as Sherlock stirred and relaxed at the brush of skin, turning his head up to sniff quietly at Mycroft hand and fingers, and opening his eyes with a faint rumble in the back of his throat. The purr was different to the ones that had been directed at John, it seemed like more of a calling trill, inquisitive and reaching, as if Sherlock was asking for Mycroft like a child would ask for a parent, and John frowned with bemusement and let Sherlock’s wrists go, slipping from the bed. Sherlock seemed mollified and out of it, his pupils dilated contentedly again, face slack, and he even moved his hands to be oddly and meekly tucked against his chest.

“I’ll get the dirt analysed,” Mycroft murmured indolently and gracefully pulled out a handkerchief with a flourish, soiling the white cotton with the mud from Sherlock’s cheek while he pushed his other hand up into Sherlock’s hair, watching attentively as Sherlock tipped his head to follow the movement and nosed at the inside of Mycroft’s wrist intuitively. “It could help us find out where he’s been. If I were to hazard a guess though, I’d say it was somewhere near a riverbank. – Of course, a lot of it will have been contaminated by the other layers of grime on his skin, but hopefully this won’t pose much of a problem.”

“He mentioned a box,” John recalled abruptly with a lump in his throat, seeing Mycroft collect dirt from Sherlock’s scalp, under his nails, and then from Sherlock’s paw pads, wrapping it all up in his handkerchief. “A box in the ground. What do you think it could mean?”

Mycroft tucked the handkerchief away in his jacket pocket and pressed his mouth together but didn’t answer John; instead he looked down at Sherlock silently and reached to cup his head again, threading his fingers through the curls coiled at Sherlock’s temple. He stared at his semiconscious younger brother for two long, tensely still minutes, and then turned Sherlock’s head aside to expose a small scar at his throat that made the blood in John’s veins run cold. It was still new and faintly pink and shiny, and its shape made John automatically touch the TB injection scar on his arm with a deep furrow of his brows. John inclined close and smoothed his fingers over Sherlock’s neck, bothered and irritated at himself for missing it, and rubbed at the mark with more vigour, a flare of fury and protectiveness blooming in his chest that he’d felt a few times before around Sherlock.

“I shall personally handpick a team of highly specialised…experts to take a look at him. We need to get him tested. Check his DNA,” Mycroft said conversationally, wiping his hands clean and bending to pick up his fallen umbrella, “see if we can’t construct some sort of cure that can be administered and—”

“No,” John said bluntly with his eyes still locked on the scar, and he listened to the rustle of Mycroft’s clothes as he shifted with a discernible issue to John’s words. “You’re not going to experiment on him.”

Mycroft swept a hand at Sherlock’s naked form, “Do you want him to stay like this?”

Standing straight and glowering, John lifted his chin and clenched his fingers, “No. Of course not.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Mycroft asked him blankly with a patronising smile. “How else will he—?”

“I will not have you poke and prod at him like he’s some…some sort of…” John trailed off with an angered gesturing of his arms and looked to Sherlock as he came around enough to push up onto his elbows.

“Monster - Like some sort of monster. Right, John? Is that what you wanted to say?” Sherlock mumbled with a gravelly whisper, peering between Mycroft and John quickly and then lowering his gaze to his naked body with a crooked smile and a humourless laugh, “The word freak has never been more fitting…”

John shook his head with a soft sigh, “You’re not a freak, Sherlock…”

“How can you say that when I look like this?” Sherlock asked him, and it was said in such an angrily sad tone that John swallowed and looked down at the floor. 

“So it’s settled,” Mycroft sniffed and made for the bedroom door to leave, “I’ll be back here within the hour—”

Sherlock turned back onto his side and curled up, ducking his head and bringing his legs up to his chest, “No,” he said briskly, folding his hands under his chin. “Not today. Today I’m staying here. I can’t abide another environment. Not now. Not yet.”

“You need to be looked at as soon as possible, Sherlock,” Mycroft argued, staring down at the handle of his umbrella indifferently. “By professionals. It’s for your own good. The sooner the better. We need to figure out how this happened to you and if it can be reversed.”

“He said no,” John told him, staring at the curve of Sherlock’s naked back for a second and then looking over his shoulder at Mycroft. “I want him to… be okay as much as you do, but he needs to recuperate. You must know that. He needs time, Mycroft.” 

“He’s had eight weeks,” Mycroft replied with bite, but he glanced at Sherlock from the corner of his eyes and tipped his head down before strolling rigidly from the room. “I’ll be by tomorrow. Good day, Doctor Watson.”

John lingered in place firmly until he heard the front door open and click closed, and then stepped up to the bed and looked Sherlock over once more, “You need a bath,” he stated, pushing for casual and jovial, and failing miserably. “I won’t take no for an answer either. You’re filthy and you need a wash. Half cat or not.”

When he got not answer John reluctantly took it as a good sign, knowing that Sherlock could have straight out declined him, and turned with a sigh, leaving the room to fill the bath with warm water. He ignored any sort of shampoo with an awkward expression and pushed other washing products aside as he read the labels in concentration, trying to recall how a childhood friend of his had once bathed his cats. Standing back to survey the room, John gathered a bundle of towels, placed one on the floor in case of Sherlock reacting badly to the water, and then took out his phone to briefly search how best to wash and dry the fur of a cat. The instructions were basic and easy, and for a fleeting moment John wondered why he had searched them in the first place, but read each small paragraph anyway before he returned to Sherlock’s side, feeling anxious and oddly uncomfortable at the prospect of washing his friend.

Sherlock was mute and unmoved on the bed, his tail still caught up between his legs and his body tucked into a tight, small ball with his back very slightly arched and his head down. John rummaged around the bedroom for Sherlock’s comb, pocketed it, and resumed his path to the bed to check Sherlock had not fallen asleep. As John got closer, debating how best to wake him up, Sherlock’s ears lifted and twisted in his direction and made him pause for a split second, enough to gauge if he welcome or not, until he continued onward at the sight of Sherlock’s tail slipping into view to curl gently at the end, friendly and steady.

“Come on,” John whispered and helped Sherlock sit and then stand up onto his new feet. Sherlock still seemed to be having a little trouble walking on them and John wasn’t sure if that was because he’d not been on them much because of his unknown situation or because he had just chosen not to use them. Yet, as he helped Sherlock into the bathroom and then into the bath, he noticed that Sherlock sat down within the tub crouched on his hind legs in such a instinctively natural and familiar way that it occurred to John that Sherlock had perhaps not been walking up on two legs but on all fours, or at least been closer to the floor than he would normally be.

When Sherlock sat down properly, stretching his legs out in front of him under the water without a word, John turned and reached for the showerhead, gently washing the grime from Sherlock’s hair, being mindful of his ears and shielding his face by cupping his hand at Sherlock hairline, and even tilting and positioning his head back. John worked in silence, trying not to think about how weird the whole situation probably was between two friends. He knew that Sherlock could probably wash himself and didn’t actually need John’s help in any way, but the half emaciated, bruised and dirty sight of him did something to John’s chest, and he felt almost calmed about being able to tend and care for Sherlock once more. Sherlock was weak, wearied and oppressed, and any strength that he might have had stored, had probably been used up during his earlier thrashing and screaming.

“There won’t be one,” Sherlock mumbled when John began tenderly combing out Sherlock’s wet hair, and he looked at John from the corner of his eyes and tipped his head when John frowned at him in question. To clarify what he meant, Sherlock continued on, “A cure. My entire DNA structure has been altered. I doubt that it’s reversible. Not without…without knowing how I got like this to begin with—Which is impossible. This, all of this, is illogical. I’ve been over it in my mind again and again, but I cannot possibly fathom how something like this was thought up, let alone carried out to such a degree that it actually worked, that it actually changed me to this extent. What was the purpose of this? Why…would someone do this and then toss me in a box? Was I defective? Did I…die? I think I died…” 

John stopped what he was doing for a moment and then washed out the comb in the water behind Sherlock’s back, “We’ll find a way to fix this, Sherlock,” he soothed and swallowed heavily, picking up a nearby sponge to scrub Sherlock’s skin clean methodically. Sherlock had started trembling, more from at the last words he’d uttered than anything else, and John paused, and then kneeled down beside the bath to force eye contact with him, gripping the side of the bath tightly in his hands to stop himself from reaching out. “You’re alive now. That’s all that matters. Do you hear me? You’re alive now. You’re home. We’ll deal with whatever happened and the repercussions together, okay? You’re not alone, Sherlock. You’re never alone.” 

Sherlock shook his head and choked out a sombre laugh, but looked at John with perked ears, “Was I really gone for eight weeks?” he asked after a second or two, frowning.

“You didn’t know that?” John asked, leaning close to him in concern. “You didn’t know how long you were away?”

“No,” Sherlock sighed in admittance and turned to stare down at his knees, “no. I don’t keep tabs on the days at the best of times but I…I didn’t know where I was or even who I was for…for quite a while. Didn’t remember my name for hours. – And then when I did. When I recalled who I was, I mean, and what was wrong with my body I…”

Getting back to his feet, John pushed a hand on Sherlock’s bare and wet shoulder, “We don’t have to talk about it. Not now. Let’s just…get you clean, yeah?” John smiled at Sherlock’s upturned face and then went back to washing the dirt from his skin and fur, using his fingers in the fur down his spine. “Do you want me to…stay with you later? – I mean, I imagine you want to drink something, possibly eat something as well judging by the state of you, but I get the feeling you’d also like to sleep? A lot?—I’d need to change your sheets first, of course, because you got them all muddy…but, you know, if you wanted me to stay with you until you fell asleep then…then I’d be fine with that.”

Sherlock purred in reply and then looked ashamed and disgusted with the loudness and suddenness of the sound, ducking his head down and pressing his ears to his head, “Please ignore whenever I do that,” he muttered tiredly with humiliation. “I don’t even know how I am able to do such a thing – I wasn’t even aware that I could do that.”

“You’ve not…purred until being here?” John asked, trying to sound nonchalant but feeling immense warmth spread through his torso at the prospect. Sherlock reached up to impulsively rub at one of his ears with the side of his hand and shook his head in answer, making John smile widely despite everything. “Well, I mean, it’s a good thing. Purring is good. It means you’re happy. You know, which is good.”

“It’s embarrassing,” Sherlock scowled and looked at both of his hands, flexing his fingers. “I shouldn’t be happy anyway. Not when I’m like this.” 

John sighed quietly and reached to clean Sherlock’s tail, peering at him when Sherlock brought his legs up to hide his face against his knees, “You’re still you. Regardless of how you look. You’re still Sherlock,” John told him softly and shifted to cup his hand over Sherlock’s nape. “Now, enough brooding. Clean your front and then let’s get you dry.”

“You do it,” Sherlock muttered and lifted his head enough to allow John passage to his torso and stomach. “I’m… weary and I…don’t really want to touch myself. At all – I can barely stand looking at myself as it is.”

John frowned, opening his mouth to reject the very notion of touching Sherlock intimately again without a real reason to do so, but closed it with a long, drawn-out exhale and uncomfortably cleansed the rest of Sherlock, making sure to be as impersonal as he could with the way in which he rid Sherlock of the grime and dirt layered over his crotch and backside. Sherlock remained impassive throughout the rest of the washing, and shakily stepped out without grievance at John’s request later on, and let John wrap his body up in towels to be gently dried. John very carefully ruffled a separate towel over his head and ears, being mindful of his fur, and pressed and dabbed at Sherlock’s hair until it was slightly fluffy, then left to retrieve Sherlock’s blue dressing gown and held it up to him with a friendly smile.

“I want to be in your bedroom. Can I sleep in your bed?” Sherlock asked lowly as John helped him into the gown, and Sherlock idly watched the way John smoothed out his lapels with a far-off look, missing the shocked expression that rippled over John’s face at his question. “I have a need to be…somewhere up high.” 

“Of course,” John nodded and tried to attain eye contact with Sherlock, patting Sherlock’s arm and then tying the sash on his gown for him, covering his new naked body. “Of course you can. I’ll just change your sheets and sleep in your—”

“No,” Sherlock interrupted with a glower at the bathroom wall.

John arched his eyebrow and then smiled affectionately in the next second, “Ah. Right. Yes. Yeah. I’ll stay with you until you sleep, sure. Like I said I would.”

Sherlock’s glower increased and he locked eyes with John so suddenly and intensely that John couldn’t help but flinch back, “No,” he said, just as curt as the first time, “You’re not listening. I want you there. I need you to stay.”

The gravity of the statement, of what Sherlock was asking him, settled on John’s shoulders and then his heart with growing realisation, and he retained the eye contact for a long moment before he found his voice enough to reply, “Okay,” he told Sherlock, half turning to the bathroom door in an invitation for Sherlock to follow him, “let’s get some food in you first though, yeah? Nothing too heavy. And a drink. Several glasses of water for now.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed and trailed clumsily alongside John, with his assistance, to the kitchen where he picked at the small meal that John put in front of him without much issue and drank two glasses of water thirstily. His teeth pierced and ripped and tore at the food, and then clinked against the glass whenever he took a messy mouthful, and John watched him, faintly entranced by what he was seeing. Sherlock was cumbersomely holding things as if he’d hardly ever used them before, like he was relearning how to control and move his arms, fingers and mouth, and John found the entire thing heartrending and fascinating. 

Sherlock’s clawed hands tapped on the kitchen table when he wasn’t using them, his pupils narrowed, ears pricked forward and tail held low behind him and distantly twitching along with Sherlock’s legs and clawed feet. He looked ready to pounce and incredibly focused, bursting with energy, and John grinned faintly as he made himself a light snack and sat at the table with him. The atmosphere wasn’t the same as it had been before Sherlock’s disappearance and John still felt very slightly guarded about the animalistic gleam in Sherlock’s eyes, the way he tilted his head and the smell of his scent, but it was better than the emptiness that John had been suffering, had been drowning in, whilst Sherlock had been away. John mimicked Sherlock’s slow and relaxed blink as their gazes met over their food, and Sherlock paused for a second, purred extremely quietly, and then carried on eating with what looked like a sociable wave of his tail.

When they both retired to John’s bedroom, after a quick stop off at the bathroom for John to brush his teeth, Sherlock climbed into the right side of John’s bed and curled up upon the mattress without a word, the top half of his head and his ears the only thing showing above the covers. At first John just stood at the left side and stared at him, still finding the whole situation highly preposterous and feeling confused, angry, upset and happy all at once. Having Sherlock back, and having him back alive, was something he had wished for on a daily basis for weeks on end, except that he had never thought he’d get it granted in such a strange turn of events. Sherlock’s scent was a dark, thick invading presence and it lingered on the skin of John’s hands and the fabric of his clothes, and the longer that John stood and watched him, the more it seemed to fill the room and consume John’s senses, sending waves of vigilant tingles down John’s spine in almost violent succession. It was almost like he was sharing his bed with a lion instead of his half-starved and broken friend. 

Shaking the clashing thoughts from his mind, John took several deep breaths, got undressed, pulled on a vest and some pyjama bottoms, and joined Sherlock on the bed, bidding him a soft good night that wasn’t returned. Sherlock was so still and quiet as the minutes wore on that John shifted onto his side to look at him, making sure he was still there with a silent sigh of relief. There had been many times, too many to count, where John had sworn he’d seen Sherlock out on the street or even sitting in his chair or on the sofa, and so John stared at the back of Sherlock’s head, hyperaware of his body heat and the sensation of a tail bumping into his knee, and only let himself drift slowly but surely into slumber when Sherlock made some sort of faint movement and pivoted his ears in John’s direction. 

John awoke some hours later to a weight settling across his chest and froze in fright until he smelt the heavy, familiar scent of Sherlock and felt him drape himself suddenly over, pushing his face into the crook of John’s neck with a strange noise in the back of his throat and a sharp but gentle pawing at John’s sides. It appeared as though Sherlock was trembling uncontrollably, his overly slim frame overwrought with some sort of distress, and so John, barely conscious, pushed a hand through Sherlock’s hair with a thick sigh and stroked the curls there enough to make him purr and relax against him. John fell back asleep with the seemingly endless sound vibrating through his entire body and the heat of Sherlock sinking through his vest, and turned his face enough to nudge his nose against the hinge of Sherlock’s jaw unthinkingly.


	4. Felis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> Any mistakes are mine. I apologise for any. I tried so hard to get this done for you lovelies!

The next morning was one filled with a bright sun through a grey and dense sky, and it spilled through the curtains to blanket John’s exposed torso and face in a pale, stretched rectangle of light. It was one of the few days where the morning sun actually hurt John’s eyes and John squinted with a grunt, and pushed up onto his elbows to scrub a hand over his face, glaring at the instant headache the brash and infuriating light did to the backs of his eyes. When he blinked his eyes open completely he became aware of the empty space beside him and felt his entire body seize up in panic and despair, a swirling loop of frustrated sadness lurching so strongly in his gut that his breath hitched as he frantically looked around and scrambled up onto his knees.

Sherlock was sitting on the floor several paces away from the bed, his back curved, arms pressed in against his chest, knees bent up either side of him, and his elongated heels and clawed feet resting on the floor. He was facing one corner of John’s room, almost tucked into it like a disciplined child, with his dressing gown overly mussed and falling off one shoulder, and his ears pressed back. Judging by the coldness of the right side of John’s mattress, he had been in the corner for quite a while. Seated as he was, he looked every bit the massive, mutated cat creature that he thought himself to be, and John eyed the protracted claws as he slowly got out of bed with a frown, finding some of the blankets torn by Sherlock during the night as he pushed them aside. Everything in the bed, including John’s clothes, smelt like Sherlock; nothing smelt like it had before, nothing seemed to be John’s anymore, and the fact that Sherlock had taken over and seemingly, unintentionally, marked his territory made something very primal in John fidget and shuffle in reaction without his control.

“Sherlock?” John called softly, apprehensive as he checked the time and looked at his phone to find several missed calls from an impatient Mycroft. “You all right? Did something happen?”

The closer he got, however, the more Sherlock’s back arched and his ears flattened and so John paused, unsure. He noticed, after another glance, that Sherlock’s tail was squashed under his backside and between his legs, and sighed loudly with an inane gesture to the rest of the room in confusion, unsure of the nature of Sherlock’s mood change. John didn’t know much about cats; he’d never owned a cat nor spent enough time around cats to be able to understand their body language or know what they needed and when, but he did know Sherlock, and even without the added additions, Sherlock’s aura was black and unapproachable. 

“Are you okay?” John asked Sherlock once more and when no answer was given, John pursed his mouth and took several confident, strict, but concerned steps toward Sherlock, ignoring the instinct to leave him alone. “Don’t shut me out, Sherlock. Not now. – Will you talk to me for God’s sake—?”

Sherlock hissed suddenly and crouched up onto his clawed toes, glancing back at John over his shoulder and scuffling, almost cowering, further into the corner of the room. His pupils were dilated into an oval and he lowered his head, arching his back as much as he physically could while he kept low to the ground and leaned down on his clenched fingers. It almost seemed as though Sherlock had lost himself to the animal side of him, that it was, at that moment, the most prominent part due to the high levels of emotion that Sherlock was so obviously experiencing. John glared at Sherlock and folded his arms, unimpressed and apprehensive with the sudden change in his friend’s demeanour and watched as Sherlock moved on all fours, shifting around on his knuckles and his clawed toes with such radiating irritability that John himself felt it prickle at his skin, forcing him to flex his shoulders and change his footing. Something had affected Sherlock to such a degree that he was so standoffish, anxious and defensive, that he had withdrawn into a more primitive and animalistic state, submitting to the cat part of him, and John briefly wondered with a lump in his throat, how many times Sherlock had done the same thing out on the streets. 

John squatted slowly down to his level and tilted his head, “All right, Tarzan,” John tried to joke with a calm and soft voice, trying to very slightly move closer to Sherlock, “What’s wrong? What is it? – Did you remember something? Did you…have a nightmare? If there is something that’s making you act this way, you need to tell me. I can’t hep you if you don’t tell me, Sherlock. What is it? Tell me. Talk to me.”

The door to the bedroom opened suddenly and John turned and stood as Mycroft stepped in, dressed in a grey suit with swinging a black umbrella, “Ah. Finally, you’re awake,” he intoned with a meaningful look and a tight, pompous smile John didn’t understand. Mycroft looked skyward in irritation while John glowered, rigid and furious, and then Mycroft motioned to the recoiling figure of Sherlock, whom had very quickly become excessively tense at his brother’s arrival. “He wouldn’t let me wake you – In fact, he very nearly chased me out of the room like rabid dog.” 

“Good,” John retorted and braced his hands on his hips, “You can’t just turn up this early and expect us to be ready to leave, Mycroft. We need time to—”

“This needs to be done, Dr Watson. Now,” Mycroft interrupted, and his cold eyes warmed a fraction as he turned them on Sherlock, staring until Sherlock shifted petulantly. “You agreed to this, Sherlock. As you should have. We need to do this now. Valuable time has already been wasted since you’ve been away.”

“At least give him a few moments to calm down,” John insisted after taking a deep, calming breath himself, ignoring how brash Mycroft was being. “He’s been through a lot, can’t you see that?”

Mycroft walked further into the bedroom, and in response to Sherlock’s sudden and vicious growling he pulled something from his jacket pocket with an ostentatious gesticulation, “Enough of this,” he murmured and moved closer to Sherlock, holding out what looked like a ball of compressed herbs in the palm of his hand with a penetrating and interesting gaze, his head cocked. 

“What’s that?” John asked just as Sherlock’s head perked up, his ears erect and forward in attention. “Mycroft?”

“Catnip,” Mycroft replied with a condescending grin and rubbed the ball between both hands, observing Sherlock’s reactions with a mixture of intrigue and disappointment. He took a few more precise steps toward his brother and all but pushed the ball into his face. “Just testing a theory.”

Sherlock jerked his head back in anger but swallowed thickly, shaking and sniffing with his mouth ajar, and then abruptly snatched it from Mycroft to chew on wildly, rubbing it over his chin and cheek in random intervals, “…I’m sorry, what? Catnip?” John exclaimed, grabbing for Mycroft’s sleeve to pull him back, “You can’t just get him bloody high, Mycroft! That won’t solve our problems – Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? He’s a recovering addict and he’s been missing for eight weeks, starved and alone!”

“First of all, it’s not addictive. Secondly, I would think this solves the most recent problem of his inability to cooperate quite nicely,” Mycroft reasoned while Sherlock stretched out across the floor on his back, drooling and rolling his face against the ball with a deep purring. “He doesn’t need to be dressed, but retie his dressing gown and bring him to the car. The high produced usually lasts between five to ten minutes, followed by a one or two hour refractory period in cats, so we haven’t got a huge amount of time.”

“He’s not a cat!” John shouted indignantly, openly ignoring the otherworldly rumbling sounds coming from Sherlock’s throat. “He’s still Sherlock, he’s still…partly human. – He’s more human than cat.”

Mycroft paused by the doorway and flicked his impassive gaze to Sherlock’s frenzied form, “We shall see,” he said and left them alone without another word or glance back.

John turned slowly back to where Sherlock was lost in the throes of his pleasurable high and sighed, rubbing a hand down his face and debating the repercussions of pinching the catnip ball away from him to snap him back to reality. Deciding it was best to leave Sherlock to it for the time being, John dressed quickly and then reached down to haul Sherlock to his feet, gathering his trembling body close to tightly secure the sash on Sherlock’s dressing gown and cover his naked skin in blue silk, before then wrapping him up in the torn white sheet off John’s bed. Sherlock wriggled like a hyperactive kitten, his eyes heavily lidded and his cheeks, nose, mouth and chin covered in the flecking bits of catnip that he occasionally chewed on with sharp and grinding teeth. His claw-like nails dug at and kneaded the ball to bruise the catnip further, releasing more of the pleasurable oil that he yearned for, and the glazed and eager look on Sherlock’s face made John angry. 

“Come on,” John whispered inanely and led him down the two flights of stairs to the awaiting black car parked up snugly against the kerb. Mycroft opened the back door quickly and helped pull and arrange Sherlock along the back seat, being mindful of Sherlock’s feet, ears, and tail. “Sherlock is going to go ape shit once he realises what you just did.”

“Sherlock was hardly himself back there, therefore once he is, he’ll know that what I did was logical and for the best,” Mycroft retorted, making room for John to sit beside him and signalling for the driver to go. “I only have his best interests at heart—”

John snorted and kept his eyes on Sherlock, “Yeah, when have I heard that before?”

“It wasn’t wholly because of me that he was acting that way,” Mycroft murmured after watching John from the corner of his eyes for several quiet minutes, “My presence was not the full reason for his dark attitude. – Do you know what he was doing when I arrived? What I caught him doing? Do you want to know?—His reaction was one of embarrassment, which in turn changed to anxiousness and defensiveness. He hadn’t realised what he was doing until he was caught doing it, until he had done it. Strange how that can happen, isn’t it Dr Watson? When one isn’t in full control of themselves and allow emotion or some basic instinct take control.”

“Get to the point,” John demanded through his clenched jaw, squeezing his knees and giving Mycroft half his attention, “What was he doing?”

Mycroft smiled slowly, “Scenting you,” he revealed, arching one eyebrow very faintly as he lifted his chin. “It was quite a sight – He was crouched over you like some obsessive avenging angel, rubbing his cheek against yours.”

“That’s it?” John scoffed, shaking his head and huffing through his nose with a humourless grin, showing his teeth angrily. “Big deal. At least he wasn’t pissing on me.”

“It is a “big deal,”” Mycroft told him seriously. “Especially when his reaction was a violent one – You see, to him, you’re his property. He’s marked you as his. I only had to step inside the bedroom for him to madly fling himself in my direction with a very powerful intent to cause harm – He was protecting you, and quite possibly reacting to how different I smelt since yesterday, but to react physically and violently, is a very big problem, John. Luckily he snapped out of it before he was able to actually do damage to me, and later became anxious because of his actions, and then extremely defensive.”

John rolled his eyes and folded his arms, “Do you know anything about cats, Mycroft?” he asked, lifting his brow when Mycroft blinked at him silently. “Until we can get to the bottom of…all this, until we can figure out, and find out, what exactly Sherlock is…spliced with, you can’t go and make your silly deductions—You forget that he was on his own, like this, for eight weeks. Eight weeks of being alone and stuck in his head. Eight weeks with a mass of clashing instincts and thoughts and feelings. This aggression is actually pretty normal, I’d say. – And he’s always been prone to sudden mood changes. You, of all people, should know that.”

“I know my brother, Dr Watson,” Mycroft said curtly and nodded to Sherlock’s constant pawing and purring, “and what I saw, what I experienced, was not him. – Even you were surprised when he hissed at you, were you not?”

“Yeah, but only because he outright hissed at me,” John countered, feeling particularly protective and wary, “I’ve never been hissed at before…Look, enough, yeah? He’s still Sherlock. So I shall treat him as such.”

Mycroft exhaled in annoyance through his nose, “I was not suggesting—”

“Well, whatever you were suggesting, don’t,” John interrupted, looking out the window of the car briefly and then checking the time with an anxious peek at Sherlock’s glazed expression, wondering if he was truly out of it. “Let’s just…get him looked at.”

The rest of the ride was filled with thick silence, Sherlock’s cloying scent, and the almost continuous vibration of purrs. John tried to keep tabs on the twists, the turns, the bumps in the road, and any street signs that they passed, but in the end he gave up, having no idea where it was that Mycroft was taking them. He was not as apt as Sherlock was with recalling and memorising the streets of London, even after living in London for as long as he had, John still did not know all the back alleys, shortcuts, or every spidery street and dead-ended road. The thought made John glance over toward Sherlock again, and he watched his squirming friend until he tired of the awkward, embarrassing way that Sherlock gnawed and nuzzled the balled up catnip, sprinkling bits of it all over the car seats and floor. Mycroft was stoic and still, barely blinking, and John sighed resignedly, turning to look out the window just as the car pulled up to a massive, ominous metal gate, which opened slowly to allow them entry. 

The unknown facility building looked daunting, even to John, and he pressed his mouth closed, keeping his opinions to himself while the car doors were opened and several people moved forward to help a dazed Sherlock into an awaiting wheelchair. The individuals whom struggled with his fidgeting form were a mixture of interested, faintly disgusted and shocked at Sherlock’s appearance, but they didn’t utter a single word, and after one slight nod from Mycroft, pushed Sherlock promptly through the automatic doors of the main entrance and down a very long and winding corridor, decorated with white floors and ceilings, tiled and clean and eerily perfect. John kept pace with them protectively, glaring at the odd person every few seconds, confused as to why so many were seeing to the transfer of Sherlock until he noticed that several of them were actually doctors, grasping high-tech digital iPads or phones which they pressed at with frantic and eager fingers. One doctor was an Asian woman in her late thirties with short wavy black hair and glasses, and as they rushed Sherlock into a vast and sterile, new-looking room, she glanced at John with a quick and polite smile and gestured him over, including him in the task of moving Sherlock to the neatly made hospital bed.

“You must be Dr Watson. I’m Dr Chu, Ling Chu,” She introduced socially, with only the faintest tilt of a Chinese accent to her words, holding one of her hands out to John as the other people in the room stripped Sherlock naked. “I specialise in pathology.”

“Pathology?” John frowned as he shook her hand, his focus shifting from her to Sherlock and back again. Sherlock was still dazed and high, but his ears and tail were twitching, and John had a bad feeling about the state he was going to end up being in once he snapped out of his stupor.

“Mr Holmes thought it necessary to have a…range of highly qualified doctors,” Dr Chu told him with an odd expression, her smile tightening as she purposely looked at a ginger bearded man lingering near Sherlock’s clawed feet. John squinted at him and then leaned close to her in question, and she sighed, cutting him off before he even managed to ask. “He’s a Veterinary surgeon.”

“Right. Of course.” John nodded vaguely and then rubbed his face, “So…how are you taking this so well? Did Mycroft explain everything?”

“We know as much as you do,” Dr Chu said with another tight smile, and moved over to Sherlock as Mycroft made his presence known at the doorway of the room, leaning on his umbrella and staring at his younger brother vacantly.

“Dr Watson,” Mycroft murmured a few seconds later without acknowledging John properly, face unchanging, “you must be hungry and thirsty, why don’t you get some breakfast in the meantime? There is a quaint cafeteria just down the hall and to the left – I hear the coffee is fantastic.”

John shifted his stance and folded his arms, “No thank you – I’ll be fine. I think I’d better stay here. Just in case.”

“In case, what?” Mycroft asked, breezily, tapping the end of his umbrella on the floor and then motioning to the crowd of doctors, which only seemed to be growing, as more and more people entered the room to surround Sherlock’s figure. “I assure you, Sherlock is in the best and most capable of hands.”

The ball of catnip thudded dully to the floor when John glanced back at Sherlock, and he eyed the way his flatmate blinked blearily and lethargically while looking around, relaxed and still seemingly out of it, “I’m sure…” John muttered, derisively. 

Truthfully, John was hungry, not having had any sort of breakfast, but he didn’t want to leave Sherlock’s side, not when Sherlock was so vulnerable and closely encircled by strange faces with strange and clinical gloved hands, in a strange place and an even stranger room, surrounded by strange and strong smells. Not only was John wary of the animal side of Sherlock, which would no doubt react badly to the unfamiliar location once he as more aware, but John was worried for the obviously damaged human side as well, and swallowed the rising lump in his throat, narrowing his eyes when one of the doctors closed in further and further, looming over Sherlock and even turning Sherlock’s head aside to shine a small handheld torch into his face. Sherlock reacted in slow motion, squinting with a sluggish grimace, and reached out to swat the man away, turning onto his side to display his naked back to the doctor in such an obvious and affronted way that John felt his mouth twitch in a smile. Another doctor, a man with black-rimmed glasses and an unshaven square jaw, reached to touch Sherlock’s waving tail and John huffed in annoyance at the eager grasping, about to intervene, before Mycroft caught his elbow in a gentle cage of sophisticated fingers. 

“They need to assess him,” Mycroft intoned, “Go and get a coffee, Dr Watson. You’ll need it. Today will be a long day.”

John observed how overcome and relaxed Sherlock still was, hesitating as he noticed a crease between Sherlock’s brows grow a little when yet another doctor took hold of Sherlock’s slender wrist, but then John ultimately sighed and left the room. He wandered the seemingly endless corridor for three minutes before he was able to find the cafeteria and get himself a cup of coffee and a quick bite to eat, insanely happy that he didn’t have to pay for it when he realised that he didn’t have his wallet with him and so mentioned Mycroft’s name. The coffee wasn’t the best he’d ever tasted, but it was certainly better than any coffee he’d had at a hospital before, and he took several gratifying gulps of it as he made his way back to Sherlock’s room, paying faint attention to the other rooms he went by. 

On either side of him, throughout the corridor, were a bunch of doors that led into rooms that were either empty or littered with equipment that John had never seen before. He paused next to one such room and tried to enter, but it was locked tight, the window very slightly tinted and the lights off within. From what John could make out, it was special, expensive and high-tech equipment, and he frowned deeply in suspicion, taking out his phone to snap a quick photo of it, as well as the corridor. He knew it could probably turn out to be nothing, or turn out to be some sort of government secret that Mycroft was entrusting John to keep to himself, as well as the masses of doctors that Mycroft had apparently nabbed up from the surrounding area and overseas, but John couldn’t help feeling very slightly suspicious of it all. Mycroft was difficult to trust at the best of times, and the fact that he somehow had access and control over a secret building with high-tech equipment and an assortment of employees and doctors at his fingertips was utterly strange, no matter what position he held in the British government. 

At the sudden thunderous rumble of commotion and clattering metal that echoed down the corridor, John rushed back to the room to be faced with a cowering group of doctors and an unhappy and stern looking Mycroft. One part of his immaculate suit was torn almost to shreds, hanging off him in ribbons of silken soft fabric like the peeled skin of a banana, and Mycroft’s umbrella was in a black heap in one corner of the room, bent out of shape and ripped, the metal structure twisted inside out. John, still holding his steaming coffee cup, scanned the room for Sherlock and frowned, panic-stricken and angry when he couldn’t spot him, but as he turned to confront Mycroft, he noticed that the older Holmes was glowering at the hospital bed intently, outraged and peeved. John followed his gaze and then slowly bent at the waist to peer underneath, dropping to a squat when he saw the ominous figure of Sherlock tucked away flexibly beneath it, huddled under the head of the bed and against the wall. 

“Careful,” the Veterinary surgeon advised John, “if he’s exhibiting cat like behaviours, which I’m very positive he is, then you need to tread carefully. Do not stare or shout at him. Make no sudden movements and avoid touching or comforting him, as he could interpret this as some sort of added threat and lash out at you. – Just as I tried to explain to everyone else here. We need to retreat slowly and give him time and space to calm down.”

“That’s time we do not have,” Mycroft said promptly. “We need to—”

“Yes, yes,” John cut in with a scowl, “I’m sure we’ve all heard the same spiel by now.” John turned his attention to the vet and smiled tightly. “And although I appreciate and respect your input, Sherlock isn’t just one big cat, he’s also still partly human. Although he may show cat-like… manners, his human side can and will most likely clash and alter that. – And though you may know cats, I know Sherlock.”

“He isn’t Sherlock,” Mycroft told him without emotion, “he’s something other than Sherlock at this moment in time.”

“Sherlock isn’t gone though, is he?” John argued and turned his focus back under the hospital bed.

Sherlock was aggressively crouched on the floor with his claws extended from both his hands and feet, his curved back pressed into the wall behind him, his ears tense and flat back against his head, and his tail curled rigidly around his body, threateningly waving. John sighed at the sight and stood up quickly in objection when one of the doctors nudged the ball of catnip over to Sherlock, looking to appease him with it, only to recoil backward when Sherlock swatted it strongly across the room and hissed, fangs bared and clawed fingernails scraping across the tiled floor in a hostile clattering. Everyone stared at the refusal of the catnip with some level of surprise, watching it spin and roll away across the floor in a trail of sprinkled and chewed bits of itself, and John shared an exasperated look with Dr Chu.

“Best and most capable of hands, huh?” John scoffed to Mycroft under his breath, putting down his coffee cup and moving to pull Mycroft back a few more steps, nodding to the curling and tattered fabric of his lapel. “Sherlock do that, I’m guessing? Angry was he? – Well, gosh, I never expected such a reaction…” The sarcasm slipped off his tongue like thick and glorious honey, and John grinned at Mycroft’s tightening face while he rolled up his sleeves and turned to assess the situation properly, edging toward the bed. “So, what exactly happened then?”

Dr Chu looked the most culpable as she loosely gestured with her hand toward the bed, “We were just examining him. All of him. At…the same time,” he confessed with a wrinkle of her nose in a small cringe. “He started to come around from his high less than a minute or so into it and sat up—”

“He didn’t want to be touched. And was still not himself,” Mycroft interrupted with a murmur, eyeing his damaged clothes with an odd considering look and then sniffing softly, folding his arms behind his back. “I tried to calm him but he lashed out mindlessly. I do not think it was with any intent to do harm to me, but, even so, the result was a damaging one – I had hoped that the catnip might have made Sherlock more tranquil.”

“Right,” John nodded as he neared the spot where Sherlock was hiding, tensing at the reverberating growl that increased in volume the closer he got, but shushing the noise away strictly. “Sherlock. Stop that.”

Sherlock swiped at John abruptly from the edge of the bed when John came to a stop beside it, his claws inches away from slicing John’s shin, and John glared as he stepped back and squatted down again, making eye contact with Sherlock for a long and tense moment, slowly blinking and lifting his eyebrows when Sherlock’s pupils shifted and the fixed look of aggression slipped off his face with the flaring of his nostrils. John shot Sherlock a quick, short, smile and motioned for him to come out from under the bed with his fingers, shuffling nearer despite the vet mentioning that he shouldn’t. Sherlock didn’t react to the motion, however he did turn his face away and half-close his eyes, parting his lips and breathing steadily. Watching Sherlock’s head lower and his ears, body and tail visibly relax; John reached out and unhurriedly and tenderly encircled Sherlock’s nearest wrist, tugging him close with a tolerant countenance and a quick glance at the huddle of doctors.

“Come on,” John whispered to him gently, “you…you need to have everything looked at. See if we can’t…fix this in some way – Perhaps we’ll find out how it was all possible?—Come on, Sherlock. I’m no happier than you are right now. And Mycroft, in his own special way, is actually trying to help and does care about you. This is…is all to hopefully come to some sort of solution for you.”

Sherlock nodded without looking at John and slipped out from under the bed on all fours, his body angled toward the doctors, ears pricked forward, and his tail held out low behind him, twitching with attention. The sight made John a little antsy and he signalled for everyone to remain where they were as he moved back with Sherlock and helped him to straighten up on his feet, holding Sherlock’s arm and checking him over while he urged him back onto the bed. Sherlock climbed up to sit on the pillow after a brief and timid kneading, crouched on his clawed feet with an odd sort of regal posture, and John touched his naked shoulder to try and coax him onto his back, knowing that it would be much easier for Sherlock to be looked at if he were spread out over the mattress.

“They have to touch you, Sherlock,” Mycroft told him when it seemed as though Sherlock was being overly stubborn and refusing to be guided back down, his gaze fixed on the crowd of doctors with narrowed pupils. “Behave.”

The vet shifted to the front of the throng and walked leisurely and quietly toward him, waiting beside the bed until Sherlock blinked slowly and turned his head away, “Good,” he murmured softly, smiling at John and then reaching to touch Sherlock, examining his ears, teeth, eyes and then his hands and feet. He was gentle and slow in his examinations, carefully running his fingers through the fur at Sherlock’s legs and feet to lift one up and check beneath. “Extraordinary. Truly – I can’t believe this is possible. He just…turned up on your doorstep like this?”

“Um, yeah,” John replied, shrewdly staring at the other doctors gradually wandering over after Sherlock remained passive to the touches, “Can you…tell what sort of cat that…that…well, you know, that is linked with Sherlock?”

“Possibly – The ears are very particular. They remind me of one certain cat breed but…because they are the size they are, it could just be down to growth and mutation that they are the way they are,” the vet told him, thumbing the attentive ears again and then stroking down Sherlock’s back to trace the base of his tail, scratching there very lightly with a studying look on his face. He huffed with a small smile when Sherlock twitched and began lifting his backside into the caress, and stopped to make notes.

“We’ll need to draw some blood – Amongst other things,” another female doctor said, eyes jumping from an aloof looking Sherlock to John’s thoughtful frown, “Will we have a problem?”

“John can do it,” Sherlock suddenly replied with a curt and dark tone, his ears swivelling around independently and catching the attention of the vet, who dropped his eyes to Sherlock’s tail to study its movement. “Anything you want taken, he can do – Scans and the such will be no problem if you don’t overstep your mark.”

The doctor sighed, “And what does that mean?”

Sherlock looked at her abruptly, “I don’t trust you, nor do I like you. You smell vile and you keep staring at me! – You’re all staring at me. Stop staring.”

“Sherlock.” John said firmly with a resigned sigh, his hand moving to Sherlock’s raised knee. 

“I only want John, Dr Chu and Dr Herriot to be anywhere near me,” Sherlock told them all, tensing and flattening his ears sideways, his tail stiffening in his palpable and rising anger, “You can all have your tests, you can take whatever you wish from me, but none of you will be in my presence physically – You don’t all need to be in here!” 

John blinked in confusion, “Dr Herriot?”

“That’s me,” the vet said with a tight grin, his blue eyes flitting over Sherlock as he indicated to the others that they should back up again, “Mr Holmes, please calm down, we are not here to upset you—”

“Stop staring at me!” Sherlock unexpectedly bellowed, drowning out Dr Herriot’s sentence and hissing at everyone hostilely. He covered his face, scratching his forehead and cheeks accidentally, and then pounced from the bed, slipping back under the bed to move to the opposite side lithely, backing up behind John and then Mycroft with a curved back. “I can’t stand it!”

Mycroft looked down with a deeply furrowed brow as Sherlock pressed his face into the backs of Mycroft’s legs, and lifted a hand to halt John when he moved to walk over, “All but Dr Chu, Dr Herriot, and of course, Dr Watson, please leave. I shall speak to you shortly,” he uttered sharply.

“Staring for cats is seen as aggressive behaviour,” Dr Herriot murmured to John when everyone excluding Dr Chu had filed out of the room, some of them still looking over at Sherlock as they left, making notes and looking miserable and aggravated. 

John nodded with a grimace and shook the man’s hand momentarily, “Not sure that’s the main reason why he reacted like that though—Sherlock,” he said softly, bending down to try and catch Sherlock’s scrutiny, smiling when he caught sight of Sherlock’s eyes between Mycroft’s legs, “You all right?”

Sherlock looked down, pawed at Mycroft’s trousers, and then moved away from Mycroft quickly, skulking on his hands and feet to sit in the corner of the room, “Fine,” he whispered, avoiding everyone in the room and lowering his head.

“Come back to the hospital bed,” John told him with concern after several moments of thick silence, “You’ve scratched your face a little, and we…need to get those tests started. – Come on. You can’t be warm sitting over there bollock naked. Let’s get your dressing gown back on.”

“Everything…smells different. Unpleasant. Wrong. I don’t…” Sherlock mumbled under his breath, trailing off and cowering, “I can’t control it. I’m going out of my mind. I hate this…hate it all.”

John approached Sherlock slowly and bent back down to pet Sherlock’s head with an awkward expression, “It’s okay,” he reassured him, stroking one of Sherlock’s hands briefly, “your dressing gown smells better. Right? Like you, and home. It’ll help.”

“Stop talking to me like I’m a child or…some wild animal,” Sherlock seethed, wrenching his hand away and recoiling further into the corner with a rumbling growl in his throat. He looked disconsolate and disoriented, his brow creased profoundly and his ears flattening sideways.

“Don’t act like one then,” John retorted automatically, wincing as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Sherlock closed his eyes tightly in response, turning his head toward the wall and jolted away from John when he reached for Sherlock again. 

“…We might need to hook you up to an IV,” Dr Chu added when John half-heartedly glowered and moved back, “You are horridly malnourished and dehydrated – Perhaps an arterial line, heart monitor, catheter…things like that.” 

Mycroft strolled over to pick Sherlock up by his armpits after a minute of stressed silence, and Sherlock uncharacteristically slumped into the grasp, “Come along,” Mycroft whispered, half dragging Sherlock across the floor and up onto the bed once again, his hands resting on Sherlock’s shoulder and side to keep him flat on his back. He thumbed momentarily over Sherlock’s protruding ribs and then moved away to pick up his discarded dressing gown, draping it over Sherlock’s naked body and tucking it around him, face masked of any emotion. “John and I will be on hand if you need us.”

“Why would I need you?” Sherlock retorted mechanically, voice emotionless and distant.

“Why indeed,” Mycroft mumbled with a forced smile, gesturing John, Dr Chu and Dr Herriot over. “Start whatever processes that needs to be done. We must get this sorted.”

Dr Chu and Dr Herriot both nodded and after a moment left the room with Mycroft to discuss plans with the rest of the doctors, leaving Sherlock to John. The room was eerily quiet for a long time, and John looked around several times before he finally gave in and dropped his gaze to Sherlock. He wasn’t looking at John, his eyes flitting from side to side rapidly, and John guessed that he had retreated inside his head, distressed and upset, and outright ignoring John. Sighing, John pulled Sherlock’s dressing gown a little higher on his bare shoulders and then fetched his coffee, standing beside the hospital bed with a protecting and stern look on his face, feeling every bit an overprotective friend with a very small grimace. He felt overly concerned and suspicious about everything and everyone, and as the day went on, and Dr Chu and Dr Herriot came and went, John took his time trying to work his head around what had happened and what it meant for Sherlock’s future. 

By the time Dr Chu and Dr Herriot walked over to the bed together holding an iPad and looking faintly buzzing with both excitement and compunction, John was nowhere near to any sort of answer, “How are you feeling?” Dr Chu asked Sherlock as they stopped on the left side of him, her face open and honest. It shuttered at the look Sherlock shot her and she shrugged and sighed, lifting the iPad, suddenly business-like. “Very well – We have both good news and bad. The good is that we’ve possibly found about every new addition this mutation has given you, but the bad news is, we have no way of knowing how to reverse any of it. Whoever did this to you must have had immense knowledge of both human and animal biology, and had access to expensive and uncommon equipment that we can only guess—”

“What, you mean like the type of equipment you have here?” John cut in with a deep frown, motioning to the door. “I saw the other rooms – This is some kind of secret scientific testing facility, isn’t it? What’s to say that this person who did this, didn’t come from here? Do you conduct genetic experiments here Dr Chu? – I know you work here.” 

Dr Chu sighed, not denying or admitting to John’s allegations, and shook her head, “They couldn’t have come from here – If someone were fired or let go, there are strict protocols that the person must go through.”

“Mistakes can happen, even in the most guarded and well protected places,” John said, folding his arms and glancing down at Sherlock’s expressionless face. “So…is there no way at all to reverse all of this?”

“If there is, we haven’t come up with the solution yet,” Dr Chu told him, looking empathetic. “That isn’t to say we won’t ever be able to…but it shall take time. A lot of it. We are all so blown away by the state of Mr Holmes and the changes his body has gone through in such a short amount of time.”

“What are the changes?” Sherlock abruptly intoned. “Besides the obvious.”

Dr Chu exchanged a look with Dr Herriot and then lifted the iPad, “Your reflexes have been enhanced, quite considerably too, much more than normal. You have increased hearing, so you are able to hear frequencies too high or faint for human ears. Your vision has also changed, allowing you to see clear in near darkness – However, this has affected the way you see colour.”

“Yes,” Dr Herriot added with a compressed smile, “You, like cats, have excellent night vision and can see at only a one-sixth the light level required for humans. This is because cats have a tapetum lucidum, which reflects any light that passes through the retina back into the eye, therefore increasing sensitivity to dim light. You also have the pupils of a domestic cat. These slit pupils can focus bright light without chromatic aberration. You will notice that your iris is a bigger size than normal, this is because the pupil will expand to cover most of the exposed surface in low light to help you to see better.”

“Right, and his colour vision is affected, you said?” John asked with concern, adjusting his stance as he tried to take in what they had told him so far.

Dr Herriot nodded, “Domestic cats have poor colour vision, like most nonprimate mammals, and have only two types of cones, optimised for sensitivity to blue and yellowish green – They have limited ability distinguishing between red and green.”

John licked his lips fretfully, “And because Sherlock has the DNA of a domestic cat interwoven with his own, then this means his vision might have been affected—”

“Yes, I’m afraid so – Hopefully I’m wrong, but we did do a lot of tests…” Dr Herriot said with his own expression of compassion.

Dr Chu waited for John to motion for her to continue and took a breath, eyeing both John and Sherlock, “You have a better sense of smell—”

“Cats, and now you, have an acute sense of smell due to their well-developed olfactory bulb and a large surface of olfactory mucosa,” Dr Herriot added at Dr Chu’s prompting, “that’s about 5.8 cm2 in area, which is about twice that of…humans. Cats are perceptive to pheromones such as 3-mercapto-3-methylbutan-1-ol, which they use to communicate through spraying and marking with scent glands. – As well as better smell, you also have better taste. Cats and many other animals have a Jacobson’s organ located in their mouths that allow them to taste-smell certain aromas in a way humans have no experience of. You have this now too.”

John touched his own face involuntarily and glanced quickly down at a stoic Sherlock, “And…does he have that? Scent glands?”

“Yes,” Dr Herriot answered, stepping close to mark out where they were, “He has the perioral gland, submandibular gland, cheek gland, temporal gland, pinna, supra-caudal gland, caudal glands and interdigital glands. – The first five glands are the skin glands on the head, located, in the order I gave, on the corner of the mouth, chin, cheek, either side of the forehead, and the ears. And the last three are on the lower back, tail and paws.”

“You also have free-floating clavicle bones,” Dr Chu told Sherlock next once John inclined his head distantly, staring at Sherlock’s cheek with Mycroft’s words from before circling in his head.

“Unlike human arms, cat forelimbs are attached to the shoulder by free-floating clavicle bones to allow them to pass their body through any space which they can fit their head,” Dr Herriot added.

Dr Chu glanced at her iPad, “You can also tolerate higher temperatures than normal, and…your genitals are also different, but it’s not bad. The lumps are reminiscent of the penile spines that cats have, correct Dr Herriot?”

“Yes. Thankfully you don’t have those,” he laughed awkwardly. “These lumps will engorge with your erection and make copulating much more pleasurable—Of course, it’s probably best that you don’t sleep with anyone for…well, for a while.”

“Can I ask,” John began quickly to break the awkward tension in the room, “why hasn’t his hair grown in the time he’s been away? In fact, why hasn’t he even grown stubble?”

Dr Chu gave Sherlock a thoughtful expression, talking mostly to Sherlock than to John, “The maximum length of hair is entirely determined by your genetics and varies from person to person and animal to animal. As you might know, there is a period of growing and not growing with each and every hair follicle – Through the anagen period hair grows, and in the catagen period hair stops, which is followed by a telogen period before the hair falls out and the cycle starts again. For humans, the anagen period, on your arms and legs let’s say, lasts around 30-45 days, which explains why the hair there doesn’t get that long compared to the hair on your head. I’m assuming this is not dissimilar to cat hair – Therefore, I think the transformation must have affected the hair length and growth on your head as well as everywhere else. So the hair on your face may be like the hair on your arms and legs, and will now only grow to a certain length.”

“The small amount of hair on your face, some of it at least, could be like the whiskers of a cat also, which are sensitive tactile hairs that are attached to a special nervous system, turning them into sensory receptors. You have some of these hairs near your ears and I found short ones in your eyebrows.” Dr Herriot told him. 

John looked at Sherlock’s cat ears and then couldn’t stop the impulse to touch the one closest to him, “Do you know what domestic cat breed he…partly is at all?”

Dr Herriot sighed and tilted his head, “I believe it wasn’t just a domestic cat that he was…altered with,” he murmured, “but the domestic cat is the most prominent, and I…I think it’s the Havana Brown breed. – It’s an intelligent cat. It can often use both paws to examine objects and communicate with its owners”

John huffed, “I’ve no idea if I should we comforted by that or not,” he muttered and tried to catch Sherlock’s vacant eyes. Sherlock was hooked up to a bundle of machines and drips, his body covered in his dressing gown and several blankets, he looked drowsy and depressed, John felt his heart clench in sympathy. “Sherlock, you all right?”

“…I’m fine,” Sherlock breathed without much effort, ears flattened to his head and eyes staring unblinkingly forward, he hadn’t moved since the last time that John and Dr Herriot had moved him to attach the monitors and IV, his head still limply turned aside on the pillow and his hands still curled up on his chest where John had placed them. It seemed as though Sherlock was finally properly relaxed and trusting like he had been when John had examined him, but there was something about the way he gazed off into the distance that made John restless and wary.

Feeling desperately uneasy, John gave in to Dr Herriot’s gestures as the man left the room, as well as his own urges, and reached out to comfort Sherlock, stroking his fingers through Sherlock’s hair, feeling the soft fur covered the skin of his scalp as he traced patterns and then numbers down the side of his head. Mycroft, who had been regarding them from a distance near the open doorway, walked over to stand on Sherlock’s other side. He had taken off his ruined jacket and had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, exposing the entirety of his pale forearm, and as he locked eyes with John he moved to rest his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, positioning it close enough to have his naked wrist near Sherlock’s mouth and nose. The response was immediate, and Sherlock leaned in, nuzzling the skin of Mycroft’s arm like he had done before, automatically comforted by the scent of his brother and purring in such a destitute way that it sounded closer to a whimper.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock repeated in a wispy tone without prompt, and John shared a worried look with Mycroft over Sherlock’s body, petting Sherlock self-consciously and agitatedly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realised (and have been informed by a close and wonderful friend of mine) that all the doctor/vet gibberish is just that...gibberish, and so I thought to leave it all here and what it means in basic terms, although I'm sure you can all guess what it meant. The huge details don't really matter to the story, but do keep in mind the additions/mutations Sherlock now has, because it will valuable to the plot...I hope.
> 
> Sherlock's mutations:  
> • More flexible with quick reflexes - he's like Wolverine...   
> • Sharp retractable claws and sharp teeth – claw nails can go longer and shorter. He has two long canine teeth, sharp molars so he can tear into meat and a stronger jaw. Nom!  
> • Increased hearing - frequencies too high or faint for human ears, as already mentioned.  
> • Can see in near darkness – with a poorer colour vision as a result. The iris of each eye is also a lot bigger to allow the pupil to dilate bigger.  
> • Better sense of smell - much stronger than mere humans. And he obviously likes catnip, which gives out a certain substance that a lot of cats like that he can now pick up on. (His sense of smell will come up a lot in the story)  
> • New vocalisations – mewing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, grunting.  
> • Pheromones - he will scent a lot  
> • Tail  
> • Clavicle - just like a cat's forelimbs are attached to the shoulder by free-floating clavicle bones which allow them to pass their body through any space into which they can fit their head, so are Sherlock's.   
> • Feet are more like a cat's feet - the way Beast from 'Beauty and the Beast' walks and the way his legs/feet look, is sort of how Sherlock's are. Sherlock walks like a cat, directly on his toes, with the bones of his feet making up the lower part of the visible leg. Sherlock will walk/move very precisely which will minimise noise and visible tracks, making him extra sneaky.  
> • Can tolerate higher temperatures – 52 °C – 56 °C whereas humans mostly feel uncomfortable when temperature passes about 38 °C (100 °F).  
> • Better taste/smell - The Jacobson's organ, which is located in a cat's mouths, allows them to taste-smell certain aromas in a way which humans have no experience of. This is what Sherlock can do now. Which is just a fancy way of saying he's got heightened senses ( In addition, just like cats, Sherlock has relatively less taste buds than he use to have - humans have more than 9,000, whereas cats have around 470 apparently - which is a gene mutation in cats and leaves them with no ability to taste sweetness. Sherlock can still somewhat taste sweetness, but not as he once did. Instead his taste buds will respond more to amino acids, bitter tastes, and acids.)  
> • Facial glands to scent - he also has glands on his ears, tail and the base of his back and under his feet  
> • Genitals - unlike the barbed penis of a cat, Sherlock has a sort of ribbed penis. Giving him a barbed penis would have been...scary let's face it.  
> • Cat ears  
> • Fur 
> 
> Now, the bit about hair growth that I added was a thought I had been troubling over for a while. I know it can be a lot to take in, but it just means that Sherlock won't be growing facial hair, nor will the hair on his head grow any longer (like certain types of Vampires). The length is fixed, and was fixed at the time of him being "reborn" as a cat person. 
> 
> I have links to all the information I used (it wasn't all Wikipedia, I swear), and if you think I should leave them here, let me know!


	5. Frēodōm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY!  
> Oh my days. You do not know how long and how much time I invested in getting this chapter ready. I had to rewrite some of it because I wasn't happy, and then I had to try and figure out a "logical" way for something to go and if Mycroft would do this and if John would do that...  
> I talked it through with friends of mine, and thankfully what I had planned seemed to make sense to them, so it should be fine...
> 
> Mycroft is being very overprotective in this chapter, and John is being very grumpy and short-tempered. And I really hope you can see and understand why that is.  
> I stand by what I've made Mycroft and John do and say, each is correct in their own unique way.
> 
> Any mistakes are mine and I apologise outright for them!
> 
> Enjoy!

John waited for the metal gate to open in the pouring rain and glared up at it when it nosily creaked at him, as if it were sardonically mocking him for not taking an umbrella for the way back, even when he’d been told to do so both by the administrator and Mrs Hudson. The violin case in his hand felt heavier than it actually was and he adjusted his wet grip on it, jostling it with a twist of his wrist, as he amended the drenched bag slung over his shoulder. The bag was filled with two more of Sherlock’s dressing gowns, his laptop, some books, and his favourite blend of tea, which had all been collected by John at Sherlock’s impatient insistence. It had been more than two months since Sherlock had been taken into the building that John was making slow progress toward. Two months since he’d been stuck with wires and needles and all but experimented on. Sherlock had been comatose for a large majority of that time, staring into space and remaining frequently limp, unresponsive and uncommunicative whilst everyone worked around him, but thankfully it hadn’t lasted; and although Sherlock’s health was ten times better than it had been when John had found him collapsed on the doorstep of their flat, they were no closer to finding out who did what they did to Sherlock, why, or any closer to finding some sort of cure for Sherlock’s mutations. 

John understood why Mycroft was doing what he was doing, but that didn’t make John feel any less guilty for helping him keep Sherlock hostage in some overcompensating testing facility, full of overeager and curious doctors armed with an assortment of equipment that John had no clue how to work. Hostage was a strong word, that’s what Mycroft had told John when he’d used it in a fit of rage, but to John, that’s exactly what described what they were doing. John was sure he wasn’t the only one to notice the wanting look in Sherlock’s eyes, or see the way he had recently begun twisting to stare out of the window whenever he could, eyes wide and gleaming with longing. He was like a prisoner craning to see out of his cell window, peering through the bars to the green grass and shining sun beyond. Sherlock was not one for staying dormant for long, for doing and achieving nothing; it sent him into deep depressions that John feared would only worsen his current mental state if it happened after such bundles traumatic events. Often Sherlock would be prone to twitching and fidgeting after staring out of the window for too long, demanding to leave the room and growling, whimpering, hissing, and fighting any and all outstretching comforting hands, even John’s, leaving cuts that throbbed and stung as a tallied remainder of the anguish Sherlock was enduring. He screamed sometimes, outright howled and pawed at his own face, trapped in a never-ending nightmare and tortured by fragmented pieces of his damaged memory.

As John strode across to the now very familiar building entrance, a sudden uproar and loud, thundering noise from within made him stutter in place with his heart in his throat, a significant dread twisting in his stomach. He looked up anxiously just in time to see Sherlock somehow get the doors open and run like his life depended on it, sprinting across the remaining distance between the entrance and John, his focus on the closing gates at John’s back. He ran first on all fours and then surged up and sprinted on his clawed feet, like John had been teaching him to do on the high-tech running machines provided inside. Sherlock outran the security guards and doctors behind him with ease, light and dextrous on his feet and stronger than John had ever seen him. He was wrapped in a hospital-type gown with wires still attached to his arms, chest and nose, and had a fierce determined look on his face, the muscles in his arms and legs corded, his tail raised out behind him, and his ears intently perked as he looked the gate over in resolve with wide pupils. It was obvious what he was planning to do, and as Mycroft appeared at the opened doors with a sad, resigned look to his eyes and his hands folded neatly behind his back, John glanced at the new, burly guards either side of him as they simultaneously pulled out tranquiliser guns, loaded them skilfully, and aimed. 

John put down the case and the bag quickly to intercept Sherlock with an uneasy grimace, lifting a hand to try and stop him before the guns were fired. He didn’t want Sherlock hurt. Didn’t want Sherlock drugged, not again, not if he could help it. John inhaled sharply, an inane sentence on the tip of his tongue in a vain effort to reason with him in some way, however Sherlock was enthusiastic, belligerent and hardly himself, and gave John only a quick narrowed glance before he jumped over John’s head without much effort, landing behind him and skidding the rest of the way with a deafening scratching of claws across concrete. Sherlock then leaped the last few inches and clung to the closing gates powerfully, scrambling to climb over them. The display was both astounding and frightening in equal measures, and John licked the rain from his lips as Sherlock pulled himself up, narrowly avoiding having his fingers caught in the closing-in metal as he reached for the top. A flash of lightning silhouetted his physique through the saturated gown and gave bright outlined contours to Sherlock’s muscled back, arms and legs, and in that moment Sherlock wasn’t Sherlock but a dangerous, impatient creature that was mindlessly trying to escape it’s enclosure. He looked exceedingly feral and wild, soaked with rain, his sharp teeth bared, as he fumbled on the slippery metal bars of the gate, and John dithered, unsure on what to do.

The first dart caught Sherlock in the nape of his neck and he flinched, jerking one hand to tug it out with a hiss. His eyes flashed eerily in the blooms of the sporadic lightning as he looked behind him, and for a moment John thought Sherlock was going to go back to attack the guards in anger, but he merely threw the dart to the floor and carried on, shaking with immediate sapping energy. He made it half way over the gate with visibly trembling limbs before taking another two darts to his lower back and thigh, and let out a strained yowl as he sagged, slipping awkwardly back down to the floor. On the way down he trapped and cut his fingers on the crosshatching of metal bars painfully and ripped through the gown, dangling briefly from the shredded, wet piece of fabric, and exposing his torso where sensor pads were still attached to his skin. John felt his heart contract when Sherlock finally hit the ground in a clumsy heap, and jogged over in worry, shooting a narrowed and furious look over his shoulder at Mycroft, blinking rain from his eyes. Fighting the effects of the specially generated drug, Sherlock stretched up aimlessly for the gates with unsteady and bloody hands, his head lolling on his shoulders. He struggled and jerked from John’s reaching arms only to drop to a boneless pile at John’s feet with a heaving chest, several seconds later.

“You need to stop doing this, Sherlock,” John whispered to him as he crouched down and lifted Sherlock’s head from the wet floor, pushing his sodden fringe aside to better see his face. “You know you can’t just leave… Not yet, and especially not like this. We…we need to get you better, yeah? Need to get this all sorted.”

Sherlock hissed lowly and indignantly with a languid furrow of his brows, and looked at John with drooping eyelids, “Want… to go home,” he slurred quietly, half his words swallowed by the sound of the pattering rain. 

“I know,” John sighed and looked up when Mycroft stepped appeared beside him, covering them both with his opened umbrella. The guards, whom had shot at Sherlock, stood motionlessly behind Mycroft for a second, and then moved around to pick up and carry Sherlock back into the building, and into the awaiting hands of the harassing doctors. John watched them take Sherlock as he got back to his feet and then reached to snag Mycroft’s elbow when he turned to follow his little brother. “We can’t keep him imprisoned here forever Mycroft. He’s only going to get better and stronger. He’s still Sherlock. He’ll find a way out, and then what? Then what?”

Sherlock wanted out, and there would come a time when he would be strong enough and sly enough to grant his own wish, and the thought of Sherlock back out on the streets made John sick and angry, he didn’t want Sherlock to have to deal with that again or be on the run from his own brother. Sherlock had already escaped one traumatic ordeal; he didn’t need to do it again.

Mycroft gave him a brief sideways glance and then walked away without a word, leaving John standing alone in the rain. John collected the case and the bag with a glower, looked over his shoulder at the ignorant world outside the gates, and then rushed over to get shelter in the lobby, shaking water from his hair and coat, dowsing the floor without a care. He waited and paced for several minutes, half waiting for his shoes to slightly dry, before he then made the now familiar route to Sherlock’s room. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep up pretences, or even how much longer he could lie to Mrs Hudson about his absence. Mrs Hudson was sharply shrewd when she wanted to be, and the look she had given him, when she’d caught him leaving the flat with the case and bag, had been so powerful and perceptive that John had momentarily been frozen to the spot, overtaken with dread and rippling waves of dark, stinging guilt. He had tried to sweet-talk her, promising her a day of scones and cream, but the smile she had sent his way had been stony and somehow pitying. Thankfully she had been away when Sherlock had turned up at the flat, but that also meant that she had come back later to find the flat completely empty, with no reason as to why that was. John, of course, had tried to explain it away as vaguely as he could, though he had never been a good liar, and whatever he said had only made Mrs Hudson frown deeper. 

When John strode into the room it was to the sight of Sherlock’s flaccid body secured to the bed by his wrists and clawed feet, his face slack in a drug induced sleep. He had been cleaned and dried of rainwater and mud, and changed into a new hospital gown, the sheets under him overly white and clean, clashing with the dark fur on Sherlock’s limp legs and feet. Dr Chu and Dr Herriot were looming over him, checking his vitals and hooking him back up to the machines either side of him with fresh tubes and wires that they carefully pushed into Sherlock’s skin and veins, finishing everything up with a new nasal cannula for his nose. John scowled at them but shook it away when Dr Chu happened to glance over, forcing a tight smile on his face instead as he walked to set the case and bag down on a nearby chair, inwardly happy when they both smeared the seat with rain and mud.

“How did he get out this time? And he got out, out too. How did he get out, out? I thought this place was overly secure and that it was extremely difficult to get outside the building without going through tedious procedures?” John asked them and pushed his way in beside Sherlock’s bed rudely, reaching to lift one of Sherlock’s eyelids to peer at and check the pupil and stare down at Sherlock’s inattentive expression. He felt lost and overwhelmed as he wiped a missed water droplet from Sherlock’s chin and then checked Sherlock’s damp head and fingers for injuries. 

He rubbed the red marks he found there, wincing in sympathy at the cuts on Sherlock’s bruised digits, which sluggishly oozed blood when he pressed down gently to see the depth. One of Sherlock’s nails on his right hand had broken in his inelegant topple off the gate and John rubbed his fingertip over the sharp shard of nail left behind as he thoughtfully eyed the restraints at Sherlock’s wrists up close. Like most of the equipment at the facility, they were state-of-the-art and looked nothing like the normal sorts of restraints that John had briefly seen before. They were a creamy white in colour, with soft, padding on the inside for comfort and to prevent harm, but the plastic mesh that they were made out of seemed to be of a higher quality then he had seen, and the way they were secured was almost multi layered. John covered one with his left hand in the guise of checking the dexterity in Sherlock’s wrist, and felt around for a way to loosen it, knowing that Sherlock’s reaction to being restricted once he woke would not be a good one. It was the first time that Sherlock had been restrained over the time he’d been at the building, and John didn’t like it, and he knew that Sherlock would definitely not like it.

“Still working on it,” Dr Chu laughed without much humour, her dark eyes fixed on John’s face. “Where were you?”

John looked up at her in annoyance, his face stern and blank, making the smile he shot her twisted and sharp, “Out,” he answered shortly, sighing when Dr Chu arched one eyebrow very faintly. “What? Do you think I somehow conspired with him? You think I have any idea what goes on in that big brain of his? – He’s done this before, you know. Planned things without exactly letting me in on it and I’m either left running off after him or I’m just…left. Do you really think I had anything to do with it? Honestly?—Why would I come back then? Why wouldn’t I just wait for him on some street? And why would he jump over me instead of taking me with him?”

Dr Chu regarded him quietly for a few seconds, “I was not suggesting anything. However, every time you are not here, he tries to escape.”

“He’s only tried to escape twice, three times including today, and I was only not in the building for it today, the other times I was still around,” John told her, gripping the metal sides of the hospital bed with a tight clasp. “He wants to go home. Can you really blame him for trying to get out of this bloody place? It’s even driving me round the bend – I don’t know what you and your…colleagues are doing at the best of times, with your stupid machines...”

“No,” Dr Chu said calmly, glancing at Dr Herriot as he rounded to stand at her side awkwardly, “He’s tried to escape more than three times, Dr Watson. You weren’t in the room for the other times.”

“They weren’t as big a try as today’s was though,” Dr Herriot told John with a low titter of uncomfortable laughter. “During the other attempts he had been more animal than man. They were just scrambles for the door, really.”

John looked between them and then peered down at Sherlock, “…Wouldn’t you want to escape, if you were him? Huh? Put yourself in his place, wouldn’t you be sick of being jabbed and tested on and experimented with? – Contrary to what the people in this place think, he is not an animal. He’s not some…some creature you can take bits from to find out how he works and keep him locked up in this room like…like it’s his personal cage. He isn’t used to this. Neither one of us is. Not to confinement!”

Dr Chu tilted her head sympathetically, “It needs to be done—”

“Don’t you think I know that?” John snapped loudly, breathing through his nose indignantly and shaking his head. “Sorry, but you must understand what he’s like by now? You must know him. You must know how harrowing all this is to him? – You know as well as I that he’s suffering, mentally, with everything. He’s blocked out the traumatic event that led to…well, to this! Doesn’t that say something? Normally he remembers everything, you see. Everything that’s important. He takes stock of everything about a place or a person or…the history of a building, and stores it in his head. He has a brilliant mind. It’s frightening to him that he’s lost what he has without him being actively involved in its deletion, that he forgot his own bloody name and was gone for eight weeks with no memory as to why! And that his body isn’t his anymore, that he’s not…not fully right. – He wasn’t “normal” before but now…now it’s…even more difficult.”

“I know,” Dr Chu told him gently and stepped closer from the opposite side of the bed, reaching to touch John’s knuckles with a light press of her fingers, “all I’m doing is suggesting that you perhaps stay with him more. He…picks and chooses a time to try and leave depending on whether or not you are with him – We need you to…only leave his side if it’s really needed. Your food can be brought to you. Someone else can fetch objects from your flat without you needing to do so. And…perhaps you can make sure Mr Holmes can’t get out before you go for a bathroom break.”

John frowned and adjusted his stance, “Are you hearing yourself? That definitely is not all you’re suggesting! You want to force me to stick by his side just so you don’t have to deal with his bullshit? Is that all I am to you? Some pacifier you can shove in Sherlock’s face to make him stop playing up? I have a life, you know. Outside of this place. I have a job. I have friends, family. And so does he! – Look, I know he needs to be looked at, okay? This, this isn’t natural, isn’t normal, isn’t right, but…” he trailed off and then glared at them both, “Can you honestly tell me that you will find a cure? That you can fix him? Because I don’t think you can. Not until you find the person who did this in the first place. And do you know how we can do that? By letting Sherlock be Sherlock. He might look slightly different but inside he’s the same man that went missing. If anyone can find this…person or persons, then it’s Sherlock—You know what, I want to talk to Mycroft. Right now. Get him for me.”

Dr Chu looked down at Sherlock’s face, “We need him here…” she said with her voice laced in compassion.

“No you don’t,” John argued with a scoff, “You have enough of him here to work with without his body being available for extra punctures. Parts of him in jars and test tubes – And I’m a doctor, anything you need I can send to you. I’m not an idiot. I might not know how to work your machines but I know how to take the relative samples that you forever come back for. I’ve taken note. I know what you pull from him more than anything else. – I’d prefer to be back at the flat with him. He’d be calmer and he trusts me more. No offence, but you’re both unreliable and… shifty.”

“He hand picked Dr Herriot and I,” Dr Chu pointed out, “Doesn’t that count for something?”

John grinned a little cruelly at them, already regretting his answer, “Do you know what I think? I think he realised he could easily use you two out of the bunch of others, that’s why he picked you – The rest were detached and unemotional, but you two? You were sympathetic and empathetic, and best of all, you both cared for his wellbeing.”

“What are you saying?” Dr Herriot asked with a narrowed gaze, fisting his hands. “Because we both…care, he thought he could exploit it and—”

“Yes,” John interrupted and shrugged, “Also, having only two doctors doing everything means it’ll be easier for him to do such a thing as escape when I leave the room—Has he not spoken to you both? Acted meek and thankful and asked for water or for something that got you both out of the room or distracted? Did something like that not happen today? He’s sly and brilliant, and you two are the easiest to sway out of the lot.”

Dr Chu and Dr Herriot both frowned gently and looked away, “I see,” Dr Chu murmured with a nod.

John cringed in instant regret, “Look, I didn’t mean it to—Don’t take it to heart. Personally I think it’s good to be a doctor and feel something for the patient, instead of seeing them as statistics and test results or a solution to solve, but doing so makes it easier to get emotionally driven or involved and therefore you get hurt in the process – I know from experience,” he muttered, loosening his hold on the hospital bed to gesture apologetically, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound as horrid as it did. I’m not trying to make you feel bad or…or anything like that. – It’s this place, it’s this place and Sherlock and just…I have a lot going on. Could you please get Mycroft for me?” 

“Of course, I understand,” Dr Chu said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and turned to walk from the room, Dr Herriot trailing slowly after her with a sour expression on his face and a furrowed brow.

John rubbed a hand over his eyes and sighed, glaring down at Sherlock’s prone figure, “I blame you for this,” he grumbled and began pacing beside the bed, scoffing with sullen laughter, eyes on Sherlock’s sleeping face, “I’m angry at you, you know – First you went off on your own and got yourself bloody kidnapped or…whatever it was. Then you were…gone for weeks. Missing. And when you finally thought to turn up to be helped, you try to escape, many times apparently, from the one place that…that could help fix you. Or that could maybe fix you—God I don’t know!”

Sitting down on another chair, John waited for Mycroft with his head in his hands, and when he never showed, as John had a feeling he would not, he stood back up to stand at the window angrily, debating whether or not to leave the room to go looking for the annoying man. There had to be a way to allow Sherlock back to the flat and away from the sterile sheets and the white room and the constant tests. John understood that there would be complications for Sherlock to go back out into the “real world,” Sherlock’s physical appearance and mental stability were just two of them, and he knew that Sherlock would make life difficult no matter where he was, but John couldn’t stand seeing him barred away from life, especially not after receiving such an odd second chance following almost dying in a box in the ground. It wasn’t just unfair on Sherlock to keep him sealed in, but it was unfair on the world. The world needed Sherlock Holmes. John needed Sherlock Holmes. There was always a way, always something that could be done; when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be right. John smirked to himself, staring at his own reflection in the window, and exhaled a hot breath against the cool glass.

When Sherlock finally roused from his drugged sleep, he was lethargic and grumpy, and he hissed and squirmed once he found his arms bound, trying to work his wrists free without success. The way he was moving seemed to be the type of practiced movement preformed by someone who was somewhat used to being restrained in such a way, and while Sherlock regained his strength slowly but surely, John wondered again about his friend’s shadowed past, specifically that of his drug use and the trails and tribulations that Sherlock had obviously endured during such a harrowing period in his life. Sherlock’s clawed toes spread as he kicked out and writhed, twisting and rubbing his body against the bed whilst he shook the metal bedframe heatedly, tearing lines through the sheets with sharp, protracting claws of both his hands and feet. He fought and tried to sit up with a loud and reverberating growl, ears rigidly back and to the sides, his teeth displayed, and fidgeted with more and more vigour and rage at the cuffs on his ankles.

“Serves you right,” John told him after several minutes of watching Sherlock struggle, wandering back to the bed to lean over and glare half-heartedly, lifting his eyebrows in question when Sherlock went instantly still and lapsed into silence at his presence. Breathing heavily, Sherlock remained taut, half arched from the bed with his head thrown back, and John shifted to try and get a look into Sherlock’s eyes, blinking slowly with a sigh when Sherlock refused to return the eye contact. “Well? What did you expect? What did you even hope to achieve from that little stunt? – We’re here to help you, Sherlock. We’re here because…we can’t go anywhere else.”

“Let me loose,” Sherlock hissed and abruptly burst back into movement, struggling harder and stronger when his palpable resentment rose. He jerked powerfully upward with a fluid ripple of his entire body and the bed jolted up from the floor several inches, throwing John backwards a few steps and scuffing the pristine tiles beneath the hospital bed wheels, leaving dark, haphazard, and twisted black lines across the floor. “Get them off! Let me go!”

The machines were flashing, beeping and bumping beside Sherlock as he knocked the bed into them, and John glanced at the screens briefly before he grabbed for Sherlock’s shoulders and then pushed his fingers into Sherlock’s hair to stroke his head, “Stop,” he muttered under his breath, finding it ridiculous but compulsory that he pet Sherlock calmly and forcefully try to keep him still with his elbows at the same time. “Sherlock, stop it and calm down. This is bloody ridiculous!”

Sherlock’s ears were still tensely sideways on his head, his tail tucked between his wringing legs, and as he thrashed relentlessly, he bared his teeth again in a violent hiss at John, “Get them off,” he demanded with an underlying growl to his tone, his pupils dilated in aggression while he wrestled against John’s hold and soothing touch. John remembered something Dr Herriot had done on his first examination of Sherlock when he’d just arrived and shoved his hand quickly beneath Sherlock’s taut body to stroke just at the base of his tail, keeping his other hand shifting through Sherlock’s curls.

Stuttering with a confused whine, Sherlock blinked widely at the touch and huffed with an awkward hitch through his nose, “Calm down,” John told him once more with a gentle overtone, and removed the hand under Sherlock’s back after a few good-humoured and light scratches, pushing Sherlock’s body back down onto the bed, “You all right now? Hm? Is that the end of the tantrum?”

“Stop stroking me…” Sherlock murmured as Dr Chu, Dr Herriot and a few other doctors appeared at the doorway, glancing between the two of them with confusion until John waved them away irritably. Sherlock shifted, precipitously calm and languid against the bed, and allowed John to pull the bed sheets around him without a fuss, completely pacified by John’s caresses.

“Will you stop making a fool out of yourself?” John asked as he stepped back to lean on the bed lightly, getting his breath back and looking Sherlock over. An IV line from his arm had come loose and John reached to adjust it, soothing the vague twitch in Sherlock’s bicep with his fingers in apology. “Listen, I need you to promise me that you’ll stop—”

Sherlock turned his head away with a loud sigh, “Did you bring my violin like I told you?”

“You know I did. And now I know exactly why you suddenly asked for it after all this time,” John said in annoyance, picking up Sherlock’s limp hands to examine the bleeding cuts and then looking around for something to clean them with, “I think we should talk to your brother. I’ve had enough of this place as much as you. There’s no reason to stay here…not…not really – I mean, yes, okay, you can’t go walking around London like…this, but…but we can…we can work around it. Can’t we?”

“Give me my violin,” Sherlock intoned, staring over to the opposite wall as John tended to his fingers as best he could, oddly happy when Sherlock’s claws retracted. Sherlock seemed to be trying to close off after his tantrum, calming further under John’s ministrations and affections, the state of his ears visibly relaxing from their tensed positions, but John brought his focus back by applying unneeded pressure to one of the deepest abrasions, unwilling to let him withdraw.

“You can’t play it when your hands are like this.” John shot him a tight look and after finding something to wrap the cuts up in, he walked around to stand on the other side of the hospital bed, folding his arms and blocking Sherlock’s view of the wall to pull in his focus completely, “We need to talk about what happened today – You all-out sprinted towards those gates, Sherlock. Jumping over me in the process, might I add. Not to mention that you’ve apparently tried several times to escape, whenever my bloody back was turned? Dr Chu and Herriot told me.”

Sherlock breathed leisurely and remained silent for three whole minutes, then tilted his head on the mussed pillow, his expression clearing contentedly, “I could wear a hat.”

“…What?” John asked, resigned and partly amused by Sherlock’s sudden change in mood and thought process.

“It would have to be a certain type of hat. Something that would cover where my human ears would be as well as the ears I have now. Something with flaps, I suppose, as abhorrent as that sounds,” Sherlock continued, and then sat up slightly, leaning on his elbows and looking at John with a growing smile that looked too mischievous and regressive to bring anything but a churning to John’s gut, “I can still wear clothes. Shirts, trousers, they’re all still doable. The tail can be dealt with fairly easily, I’d imagine. Loop it around my waist or…hide it up my jacket and coat – The only problem is my feet…difficult to hide such a discernible mutation…”

John watched Sherlock fidgeting with the restraints some more, sitting up as much as they allowed, and then smiled with a benevolent exhalation, “What are we talking about here?”

“We can work around it. Like you said,” Sherlock replied and glanced up to the corners of the room with a twitch of his ears and a flitting of his eyes. He seemed unexpectedly and eerily focused and attentive, his pupils narrowed, legs jerking to try and coil under his body, and his tail twitching lowly between them. John felt a buzz of adrenaline zip up is spine when all of Sherlock’s piercing attention latched back onto him. “You know how these restraints open. I know you do. You’ve been in my room long enough to become obviously curious with them—Actually, I assume you weren’t pleased by this when you saw me, correct? Did you look them over? Test them a little? Find out how they opened and closed? – Let me loose.”

“Wait a second,” John said firmly with a straightening of his back, keeping a levelling stare on Sherlock’s face as Sherlock cocked his head aside, calculating and thoughtful and scheming, “why don’t we just try to talk to Mycroft first, yeah? – I won’t be a part of some great escape, Sherlock. I won’t go on the sodding run! We’d not get far, would we? With your brother after us—And you have yet to tell me why you tried so many times beforehand to bolt, without telling me, without, you know, without letting me in on your plan, not that I’d have endorsed it but still... And the jumping over me as well, what was that about? Do you really think I’m like the other doctors here? Do you see me the same as you see them or something? As an obstacle to overcome? – I might have been trying to…persuade you to stop and go back, but I am not them Sherlock. I only had your safety in mind. I didn’t want—”

“What will talking achieve?” Sherlock snapped, squirming again like he had moments before, his muscles bulging with strain. He snarled and hissed, growling with mounting anger and the overwhelming need to get out, and John pinned him down by the sternum, overpowering Sherlock and waiting out his second outburst. “You think my brother will let me just stroll out of here?” 

John glowered down at him and stalked off to pace between the hospital bed and the window, rounding on Sherlock once Sherlock arched his eyebrow, “This was your idea. To come here. To let Mycroft try and…and sort this out. To give Mycroft control over your wellbeing. I was all for keeping you home for a bit longer, for letting you…get better first.”

“I know!” Sherlock said sharply, gripping the metal bars on either side of his bed with a clanking of claws, “Yes I agreed to come here, yes I allowed Mycroft and his annoying borrowed minions to try and figure me out, figure this out, but why wouldn’t I? Although I thought it all pointless, I had hoped, had wished, that they’d find something. Anything. Any way of changing me back, of making me normal and not this…this hideous, uncontrollable monster—You don’t know what it’s like. What goes on in my head. The things I think about. Dream about. The things I crave. It was better, was rational, was downright reasonable, to allow Mycroft to take me away, but it’s been too long now. I cannot abide being locked up! To spend day after day contained to this building, to this room, to this bed, and made to undergo those blasted tests. And to what end? There’s obviously nothing to be done and keeping me here, locked up like this, is driving me insane! It’s ten times as worse than anything I had to deal with on the streets during the time I was missing. In fact, I’d rather be back out there. Starving, lost, alone and raving mad!”

“You’re not a monster and it can’t all be pointless,” John interrupted, marching back over to curl one hand around the bars near Sherlock’s claws, leaning down over Sherlock heatedly, “it can’t be. We can’t just…just give up.”

Sherlock’s closest hand lashed out and gripped John’s damp coat, tugging him down so they were almost nose to nose, “You know as well as I do that I’m stuck like this, John. There is no turning back now…” he murmured, and it was only by the relaxed position of Sherlock’s ears that John knew he wasn’t being overly aggressive, “So I want out. I’ve had enough of this tedious back and forth business.”

John retained their eye contact for a tense few seconds, staring at the widening of Sherlock’s inhuman pupils, and then sighed and nodded, “I’d still rather we didn’t do it by going on the run, Sherlock. And I say “we” because I won’t leave you on your own again, all right? – I can’t believe you tried to do things alone after everything we’ve gone through,” he replied, and then as subtly as he could, John slipped his fingers to the restraint to very deliberately find the latch, aware of Sherlock’s intense and knowing gaze as he loosened it a little. “Perhaps we can make some sort of…I don’t know, some sort of deal with your brother?”

“Perhaps,” Sherlock rumbled, purring lowly for several seconds as he lowered his eyelids and let John’s coat go. He shifted his wrist; happy at the freedom John had bestowed on him, and then carried on speaking with a sharp smirk, “…after we get out.”

“Not today though,” John told him and pulled back to look down at Sherlock strictly, grabbing for Sherlock’s arm to prevent him from trying to tug it free entirely, “all right? Not today. You’ve been through enough. I won’t have you shot at again.”

Sherlock looked about to object but his ears went down and flickered at the look John sent his way, and he sniffed, looking off to the side, “Once the rain stops then. Won’t be for another few days. Four at most,” he murmured, and seemed to angle his head for a petting, as if it were an apology rather than the demand that it clearly was. He didn’t look at John, but John got the feeling that all his attention was on John and John alone, and he slowly watched as Sherlock nudged against where John’s fingers were curled around the bed bars. It wasn’t often that Sherlock begged for anything so visibly, let alone silently begging for some form of human contact. 

Over the months that John had shared the hospital-like room with Sherlock, Sherlock had imperceptibly aimed for more and more contact from John after he’d come out of his transitory comatose episode, stretching for brief touches, seeking comfort from certain scents, especially John’s own, and keeping John in view as much as physically possible. Being unused to giving Sherlock such personal and intimate attention, John had only comfortably indulged Sherlock’s need for touch, and in more quantities than he was used to giving anyone, when Sherlock had been overly intense or fussy and they had been left alone in the room together. In those moments John found that he’d have to sooth the crease between Sherlock’s eyebrows with his thumb, follow the slope of Sherlock’s nose, and then allow Sherlock to scent his hand and forearm with a warm and soft cheek while he stroked up Sherlock’s ears and into his hair. Sherlock seemed to favour the faint routine eagerly, even if he did not always verbally ask for it. Additionally, as much as it embarrassed him, John knew of the cameras in the room that captured those little moments, had known for a while, but judging by the way Sherlock had frequently repositioned where John stood or leaped up to pull them out of the wall before they did anything, told John that not everything had been seen or recorded, for which John was grateful.

John’s mouth bent on a soft grin and he sighed gently through his nose, stretching out his fingers to stroke them through Sherlock’s curls and the fur beneath, scratching lightly at his scalp, “I want us to go home too. I do. I hate it here. – I understand that they are trying to help you, but, I just…I don’t like it.”

“You’re suspicious,” Sherlock rumbled with half closed eyes, shrugging one shoulder limply and lifting his chin up to direct John’s fingers from his head to his jaw, “There’s no need to be, they aren’t doing anything too secretive or illegal…not really.”

“The person or persons who did this to you could have come from here, or someplace like here,” John said seriously, waiting for Sherlock to look at him before he continued, “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought or suspected the same? – These machines, these doctors? It’s for things I have little to no knowledge of, that half the bloody world has no knowledge of, I bet. What if…what if they’re so used to you, so collected and cool and unaffected, because they’ve seen it all before? I know Mycroft apparently explained it all to them beforehand, but really? The way they reacted was a bit…a bit suspicious.”

Sherlock purred again, deeply and for a long time, and he seemed immediately ashamed about it and unable to stop, “There are certain things that are put into effect if a person is let go or fired from a position within a building such as this,” he told John, subconsciously twisting closer to John’s hand for more attention, his entire body appeased by the idle drift of John’s fingertips. “Mycroft would not knowingly put me in harms way. Don’t be an idiot. – Everyone here has had his or her entire personal history checked. Twice. And knowing Mycroft as I do, he’s not only made sure that they are who they say they are, and that they do what they say they do, but he’s undoubtedly blackmailed each and every one of them just on the off chance.”

“Yeah,” John conceded with another grin, watching the path of his fingers as he combed them over Sherlock’s hair and traced the shape of his warm ears, still amazed by them after so long of getting more and more used to them, “Yeah. Good.”

As Sherlock instinctively nosed at the skin on the heel of John’s hand and enjoyed the roaming of John’s touch with a dazed sort of expression, staying silent and tranquil, John tucked the bed sheet more tightly around him and kept a close watch over the doorway to the room, still half expecting to see Mycroft strolling through it with a look of impatience and exasperation at any moment. However, John was sure that Mycroft was instead biding his time, he knew John’s mood and he certainly knew the moods of his brother, and so John looked up at the hidden cameras in the four corners of the room and speculated if Mycroft was looking back at him, safe in his plush chair and even plusher office. John wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Mycroft was the reason for his empty inbox on his phone over the past several months. Sarah had not text him with concern or even vague interest in what he was up to after his extended absence, and he hadn’t heard a word from Lestrade since Sherlock had come back into his life. John had been tempted to call someone, anyone, just to speak to someone else other than Sherlock, Mycroft and the barrage of staff at the facility, but something had always prevented him from doing so.

Sherlock, still somewhat effected by being drugged before, fortunately slipped off into a quiet and peaceful slumber minutes before Mycroft chose to finally make an appearance, darkening the doorway dressed in a blue pinstriped suit and polished black shoes. John kept his hand on the crown of Sherlock’s head, mussing the drying curls tickling his palm, and lifted his brows, gesturing Mycroft in impatiently with just the slightest tip of his head. Mycroft looked down at Sherlock as he strolled to stand on the opposite side of the bed, and then smiled a despondent and knowing smile, focusing on the restraints on his brother’s wrists and ignoring John’s imploring gaze. Mycroft’s face, although etched deeply at the brows, under the eyes and around the mouth with dismay, was still excessively aloof, and John tried to reign in the automatic antagonism that the familiar “Holmes mask” ignited in his gut. Although Mycroft was as pristine and posh as ever, John was keen enough to recognise the rumpled look of exhaustion in the slightly crooked position of the collar of Mycroft’s shirt and the faintly crumpled sleeves, without the need for Sherlock’s deductive skills, and deflated in empathy.

“Mycroft—” John started calmly, feeling a lot of his anger waning at the drooping of Mycroft’s eyebrows.

“It seems, no matter what, Sherlock continues to defy all logic,” Mycroft murmured, cutting off John’s train of thought and then suddenly changing the subject altogether by motioning to the hidden cameras with one dismissive hand, as if he knew that John had been giving each of them a dirty look minutes before. “Sherlock broke those weeks ago. I have yet to fix them. My fault entirely. I had hoped he’d not notice. Stupid of me really.”

John glanced at the nearest camera in distant humiliation, and then stepped aside in surprise when he returned his gaze and caught Mycroft reaching out to tentatively touch Sherlock’s curled fingers through the bed bars, “Um…Right.” 

“However, I don’t need them to know what you want to demand of me,” Mycroft drawled with a perceptive quirk to his mouth, eyes still fixated on Sherlock’s sleeping face, “what you both want to demand of me.”

“He can’t be your little test subject forever,” John replied, more curtly than he had intended. 

Mycroft tucked down his chin, incensed by John’s words but unwilling to argue or correct them, “We need more time.”

“What if there isn’t a cure, Mycroft? What if there is nothing we can do? Nothing anyone can do?” John argued and leaned over the bed to force Mycroft’s eyes and attention up, staring at Mycroft stubbornly. “You can’t keep him here like this. Can’t detain him to the bed day in and day out. – I’m in no way suggesting that we just give up. I’m not saying that. There may be a possibility to cure him, at some point, somewhere in the future once we have more data, more answered questions, but right now, there is nothing. Nothing concrete anyway—We still don’t know who did this or why, let alone how. I don’t even think you ever told me what the results were from the crumbs of dirt you’d apparently “analysed?”” 

“We need more time. Another few months, at least,” Mycroft repeated emotionlessly, his pinkie finger looped around Sherlock’s in an uncharacteristic show of affection. “I already spoke to Sherlock about it. Several times. He knows why he must stay here.”

John felt his eye twitch and moved back to shoot Mycroft a challenging look, “No.”

“He isn’t ready to leave. No matter what he says to the contrary,” Mycroft told John, toned clipped and ostentatious as he dropped his hand to his side slowly, only to motion to Sherlock with it a second later, “you think he is?”

“Ready or not, he’s leaving this place. He’ll get out,” John retorted as both a promise and a warning, folding his arms and shifting to stand closer to the head of the bed. “What are you going to do to stop him? Hm? What? You only just caught him this afternoon as it is. He was moments away from getting out, from running away from you, from me, from everyone. What are you going to do? Keep him restrained? Keep him drugged up to the eyeballs to keep him docile? – That’s something that’s crossed your mind, hasn’t it?”

Mycroft tilted his head, lifted his chin and gazed at John from over his nose, “I shall do what I have to do to keep Sherlock protected,” he told John with a cold and distasteful smile. “And I shall do that with or without you, Doctor Watson. So, which is it to be?”

“You need me,” John spat and paused to look down at Sherlock when he stirred with a frown, his fingers flexing. “He needs me. Without me he’s worse. A lot worse.”

“Wrong,” Mycroft countered and walked leisurely around to stand a few feet from John without hesitation. “It’s certainly true that you comfort and calm him, but you’re not the only one who can do that. You think too highly of yourself, it’s really rather off-putting.”

John glared and shook his head, pointing a rigid and knowing finger toward Mycroft’s chest, “You know as well as I do that I’ve defused situations by just stepping into the bloody room.”

“Honestly,” Mycroft sighed and frowned at John in mock disappointed, “If that’s so true, then please, enlighten me as to why Sherlock waits until you leave to make any attempt at an escape? You are his personal guard. He wants to get rid of you. You stop him from leaving. He blames you for his “imprisonment” as much as he blames me for it.”

“No,” John disputed, flashing Mycroft his own version of a cold smile, “No. I’ve talked to him. I’m not against him. I want to leave just as much—”

Mycroft arched his eyebrow and folded his hands behind his back, “You speak of him as if he’s of sane mind,” Mycroft interrupted. “Talking to him means nothing if it’s the feline part that urges and overtakes him more than half the time he is conscious. He is fractured, John, the pieces of Sherlock you glimpse are just that, pieces. He looks and acts differently now because he is different. It’s Sherlock but not Sherlock, all in one sitting.”

John took several long and deep breaths and stepped up into Mycroft’s personal space, “You have no choice in the matter. We’re not staying here any longer, Mycroft. We will get out—He will get out. And if it’s without me, then so be it, but he’ll get out, and there’s nothing you can do to stop him.”

“I will not put Sherlock in harms way,” Mycroft intoned icily, and John blinked, recalling what Sherlock had said earlier with an acquiescent and annoyed sigh.

“We’ll work around it,” John told him, gesturing awkwardly when Mycroft frowned at him, “He can wear a hat to hide his ears, and…his long ruddy coat will hide his tail. We just…need a way to hide his feet – Look, he’ll be safe, he’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it. I’m a doctor and I’m…just as used to his new…figure as you are, only I’ve been a bit more hands-on.”

Mycroft’s frown deepened, “So he’s moving from one confinement only to be put into another? For what purpose? If he wishes to escape here, what’s to say he won’t want to escape the flat?”

John nodded in agreement and glowered half-heartedly down at Sherlock’s resting body, “He will want to get out of there as well, but…hopefully it’ll be under different circumstances—Listen, Mycroft, please, just let him go home. Stick cameras around the place if you want. Have clones of those stoic guards stationed at particular parts across the street to take Sherlock down if needs be. Do whatever you want, just let him go.”

“…Give it another few months,” Mycroft said, and softened his stare enough to look pleading, “just another few months.”

“All right,” John agreed tiredly, and subconsciously patted Sherlock’s limp hand as Mycroft turned and walked back out of the room, lingering just outside the door when John exhaled sharply. “Any longer though, and he’ll be gone, Mycroft. He’ll find a way to defy logic…again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback fuels me!
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